


Trekstuck: The Alternative Price

by cteranodon



Category: Homestuck, Star Trek
Genre: Akira Class, Crossover, Gen, Multi, TrekStuck, longfic, possible major character death
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-10-13
Updated: 2015-01-18
Packaged: 2018-02-17 08:10:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 19,965
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2302655
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cteranodon/pseuds/cteranodon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The characters of Homestuck in the Star Trek universe! The story begins with a Federation starship hurtling through the Beta Quadrant at Warp 9, trying to escape a merciless enemy that refuses to identify itself. Before long, cadet-turned-captain John Egbert and his crew of humans, trolls, and Aradiabots become one team of a four-pronged effort to stop Lord English from destroying their universe — though it appears Lord English has somehow already succeeded.</p><p>Join your favorite Homestuck characters, all promised to get fully fleshed out stories, in this huge interuniverse adventure! I mean it. I promise. They're all gonna get fully fleshed out stories. All of them. The story starts with only the Beta Kids and Trolls, and will eventually include all of the most beloved characters in everyone's favorite horse-sexualizing webcomic.</p><p>You do not need to be a Star Trek fan to enjoy this fic. Ideally, you don't need to be a Homestuck fan, either, but I won't guarantee that's plausible.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Slingshot

**Author's Note:**

> (please note I only declined to use archive warnings because the only one that might apply is major character death, and even then not even I am sure if anyone will die or not. I don't yet know the ending! But I promise no rape, graphic violence, or other things that would generally require a heads-up)
> 
> Wow! This has been in the works for a long time. Hopefully it'll take off okay!
> 
> To any Homestuck fans who don't watch Star Trek: hello! I hope you enjoy this fic! You'll encounter a lot of Star Trek vocabulary here, and if you run into anything you don't understand, en.memory-alpha.org is a great place to look. I suggest only reading the first paragraph of any articles you're checking, though, to avoid any possible spoilers. If you don't want to look there, you can always message me!

John rushed to a screen in the middle of the corridor. “Computer! Show me the ship’s condition right now!”

An image formed of an Akira-class starship, with a hole in the disc where the bridge should have been.

“Shit shit shit!” He ran for the turbolift alongside his fellow cadet, Equius Zahhak. John slapped his communicator badge.

“Strider! Get us out of here! Maximum warp!”

“You got it,” responded the voice of another cadet, Dave Strider.

John and Equius half-ran half-fell into the turbolift. They needed to get somewhere such that they could take control of the ship. “Secondary bridge!” John called, and the turbolift carted them downwards.

“Who among our superior officers was aboard the primary bridge?” Equius asked.

John couldn’t look at him. “All of them.”

\-----------------------------------------------------------

Their mission had been a simple, but vital one for both the cadets and the higher-ups in the Federation.

The Alternians had only joined the Federation a few years prior. Immediately, a small group of eleven brilliant Alternians (who prefer to call themselves trolls, much like how Terrans prefer to call themselves humans) enlisted in Starfleet. Together with four human cadets, they proposed a project to Starfleet Academy. The fifteen of them would design a line of androids for use in high-risk missions, and take a number of these androids on a simple mapping mission to prove their androids would work.

The design and small-scale production of these androids, called Aradiabots, had been an incredible success—a combination of the technology of Alternia, the precedents set by android pioneer Dr. Noonien Soong, and the diversity of talents and knowledge among these fifteen minds. Aradiabots were strong, fast, and had a surprisingly easy time communicating with humans and trolls alike. Everything had been going smoothly so far, and certainly they had progressed farther than any of their superiors had expected.

The fifteen cadets were in the process of seeing through the final leg of their project. They were on a mapping mission through the Beta Quadrant with a crew consisting of three commanding officers, the cadets themselves, and five hundred Aradiabots, all aboard an Akira-class starship called the Zephyr. It may have seemed like a small crew, and on an incredibly high-power ship, but that was the idea; this was supposed to be a safe and easy mission. If a crew of mostly Aradiabots couldn’t handle something like this, the androids had no future in Starfleet.

Of course, it didn’t turn out to be nearly as simple a mission as anyone expected.

\---------------------------------------------------

John went directly for the captain’s chair. “I’m taking command of the ship. Equius, I need you to go ahead and take the con while you’re here.”

Equius obeyed. He took a seat at the helm, towards the front of the bridge, where he busily started controlling the ship’s movement.

John’s hands were shaking. His breathing was quick and heavy. He had held the group together on this project and many of them would probably have looked to him to guide them through this crisis even if he HADN'T chosen to take over the ship himself. But he had no idea what he was doing, and he was terrified. Not to mention that his dad…

John shook himself. It wasn’t time to dwell on that yet.

“Equius, can you give me a tactical view on screen?”

The screen showed an image of the sleek Akira class starship traveling at Warp 9, and a thin square-shaped vessel in pursuit moving ever so slightly faster.

John steadied his hand and pressed a button on the arm of his chair.

“All hands,” he called resolutely, “this is John Egbert. We’re under attack by an unidentified alien vessel. They destroyed our bridge with a single torpedo, and with it, we’ve lost Captain Egbert, Commander Strider, and Doctor Lalonde. So, I’m taking over command of the Zephyr. With the main bridge gone, control of the ship is seated in the secondary bridge. I’m asking all cadets who aren’t taking care of things in Engineering to report here immediately. We’re heading away from them at Warp 9, but they’re a little bit faster than us, so they’ll be catching up soon. We’re gonna have to figure out how to shake them off… and we’ll have to do it quickly. Egbert out.”

So far, so good. John’s right hand compulsively began massaging his thigh as he tried to stay as calm as he sounded.

Dad has been wiped from existence.

No, no, nonono. John kicked himself. It wasn’t time for mourning yet. Plus, no way could a weapon just wipe out the bridge like that when the shields were up. It didn’t make any sense. The bridge had been moved somehow, or something like that, and Dad was still okay.

The door at the rear of the bridge opened.

“WHAT THE FUCK SORT OF ARCHAIC CANDLE-MAKING BULLSHIT DO YOU THINK YOU’RE TRYING TO PULL, EGBERT?”

“Karkat.” In spite of himself, John smiled a bit. One of those things that just made him happier every time was how angry Karkat always seemed at John’s very existence.

Karkat Vantas swung himself in front of the captain’s chair and continued ranting. “I KNOW HOW THIS GOES FOR HUMANS EVERYWHERE THROUGHOUT YOUR PLANET’S UTTERLY PREDICTABLE HISTORY OF MONOTONOUSLY SCARLET SHIT-SPEWING. YOU THINK YOU’RE ENTITLED TO THE CHAIR BECAUSE YOU’RE THE CAPTAIN’S KID, AND YOU’RE GOINGTO GIVE ALL THE LEADERSHIP TO YOUR FELLOW HUMANS BECAUSE YOU THINK THEY’RE AS ENTITLED TO IT AS YOU ARE.”

“Karkat!” John wasn’t exactly inclined to stop the ramble quickly; it was just too much fun.

“WELL, LET ME TELL YOU, THIS IS A GOD-AWFUL SETUP FOR A CATASTROPHICALLY BAD HIERARCHY AND PROBABLY THE MOST BUMBLING LEADER ANY TROLL HAS EVER HAD THE DISPLEASURE OF BEING FORCED TO FOLLOW WHILE ABOUT TO DIE IN A VIOLENT FUCKING EXPLOSION. I MEAN, I KNOW YOUR SPECIES HAS A PENCHANT FOR SERIOUS SOCIAL FUCK-UPS BUT I DIDN’T REALIZE THE MORON OF THE CENTURY WOULD BE FORCING US INTO HUMILIATING SUBJUGATION RIGHT BEFORE WE GET KILLED BY WHATEVER JUST POPPED OUT OF NOWHERE AT US.”

“Commander Vantas!”

“DON’T YO… what?”

“I’m making you First Officer. Now calm down before I send you to a court martial somehow!”

Karkat was frozen. He began to break out in a slight sweat. “…forget everything I just said, okay?”

“Sure thing.”

Karkat sat to the right of John. Terezi, Vriska, and Jade filed in as he did.

“Terezi,” John said, “think you could take the navigational panel?”

“AYE, O captain!” Terezi eagerly hopped into the seat next to Equius. Terezi Pyrope had a red visor that looked like a pair of glasses, but it was a much more complicated device for blind trolls; it could stimulate her other senses in a way that allowed her to “see” everything around her in around the same level of detail as anyone else could.

“Vriska, take over for Equius. Equius, take the security station.”

Vriska Serket approached Equius’s seat and gestured sardonically for him to pass her as he headed for the back of the bridge. His face turned darker in color and his mouth took on a bit of a snarl.

“Jade, I need you at tactical.”

“Of course!”

They settled in, and turned to the screen.

“Let’s have a standard view of the enemy ship.”

Vriska reached for the appropriate button, but Terezi’s hand appeared immediately under it and pressed it first.

The tactical view disappeared, and in its place was a close-up of the square-shaped pursuer. Panels of black and white covered its surface.

“Whoops, sorry!” Terezi said cheerfully. “Didn’t see you there.”

“That ship looks like a chessboard,” Jade Harley said. “A classic chessboard, I mean. It has a lot of the same pattern.”

“Oh, I shouldn't use that excuse." Terezi was still trying to get a rise out of Vriska. "I don't even need my visor to smell you right next to me."

“Hilarious. Unbelievably original. Great job. Seven minus minus and a nice fuck you."

“Same pattern, Jade?” John asked. Fantastic, he thought, we aren't even out of danger and they're already at each others' throats.

“Well, the way its surface looks is a lot like the way chessboards were years ago. Eight by eight squares with alternating colors. But it isn’t quite like that anymore. I mean, it probably was, but the spaces are rearranging themselves!”

Sure enough, as they watched, a small section of white tilted itself outward and rotated around a section of black. As time went on, the ship’s face was appearing less and less flat, and its pattern was disappearing.

“So all of our COs were on the bridge?” Vriska asked.

“Yes,” John said stiffly. “It’s just us fifteen cadets and the Aradiabots now.”

“Ha! HA! Haahahahahaha!” Vriska threw herself into her fits of laughter. “And you think this is going to turn out, okay? I mean, you’re kidding, right? Fifteen teenagers alone in a group with no proper supervision and hugely conflicting egos? That’ll turn out perfectly! Actually, now that I think about it, there’s a great piece of Alternian literature with just that scenario. Well, I mean, fifteen troll highbloods in a school together. In that case they were trapped there by a fake adorable cholerbear. Most of them die. And they were generally more reasonable than any of us. So yes, I have only the utmost faith in how this will work out for everyone!”

The turbolift door had opened again. “Wwell, it’s already not wworkin out for evveryone, vvris.” The tall figure of Eridan Ampora stepped delicately around the rail. He was, as was often the case, not wearing his uniform, but instead a princely violet-and-black outfit complete with a cape, which everyone had to admit was much more fashionable than the bright orange cadet uniforms. He spoke with an accent that might have been called unsteady on any less eloquent speakers.

“What do you mean, Eridan?” John asked, smarting a little from Vriska’s comments.

“Gam’s gone is what i mean. He wwas on deck twwo, I think, just beloww the bridge. So noww theres just fourteen of us.”

John had to keep control. Nightmarish was no longer appropriate for how dismal his situation was, and now he’d lost fellow cadet Gamzee Makara. “So Gamzee’s the only one of us that’s gone, then?”

“Correct,” Eridan said. “I wwas just checkin wwhere the wwhole creww is. All the officers are gone, and Gam’s gone. Wwe lost like twenty aradiabots on top a that. Evveryone else is okay.”

“Okay is subjective,” Vriska replied, with an expression designed to imply that she did not care at all about his words or presence.

Rose Lalonde and Kanaya Maryam came in next. Rose was assigned to the science officer’s station, and Kanaya to communications. John invited Eridan to take the seat to his left. Nepeta and Feferi came behind them, but with no more battle bridge seats open, John didn’t give them an assignment yet.

The surface of the enemy vessel continued changing, expanding further outward.

“Kanaya,” John said, “hail them. See if you can figure out what they want, maybe?”

Kanaya was a well-composed troll, and she was known to choose her words extremely carefully. She hit a few buttons and waited, until a response flashed on her screen.

“Captain,” she said, “They Won’t Establish Audio Or Visual Contact. They Only Want To Send Written Word.”

“Well, that’s something. What are they saying?”

“It Seems We Have Something They Want. They Are Willing To Negotiate A Cease Fire If We Give It To Them. Otherwise They Will Destroy Us.”

The bridge was silent. The air itself grew still with anticipation of how John would handle the negotiation.

“Anybody have any idea what it is they want?” Vriska asked quietly.

No one responded.

“Will they tell us what it is, maybe?” John suggested.

“They Only Say We Should Know What It Is.”

“Well, we don’t,” Rose said. “So I think that settles it. We can’t exactly negotiate our way out of this one if we don’t have the pieces we need.”

“Wwe should try ta figure it out,” Eridan said, giving John a narrow, expressionless stare. "Givve it to em and savve our owwn hides. Don’t you think so?”

“I dunno…” John stood up. “Kanaya, bring up the communication logs. See if what they’re saying lines up with what they told the last captain.”

Kanaya did as she was asked, and within moments appeared too shocked to speak.

“Kanaya?”

“Sorry. They Approached Us. We Tried To Hail Them. They Fired Without Sending A Response Written Or Otherwise And Our Bridge Was Destroyed On The First Shot.”

John gave a puny smile. “So they didn’t plan on letting us live in the first place. Sounds like we definitely shouldn’t give in to them now.”

The air in the room lightened considerably, but they were still trying to escape from something terrifyingly powerful, that had taken out the primary bridge with one shot and could surely do the same to the secondary bridge or any other part of the ship. It was hard to feel tremendously cheerful.

“I need options,” John said, gesturing more and more wildly as he got more desperate. “Any ideas? Seriously, any of you could come up with something. Do they have a weak spot?"

“No structural weaknesses as far as I can tell,” Jade said. “Torpedoes probably wouldn’t do much.”

“So we can’t fight them.” John’s voice wavered. An image flashed in his head of his father, faced with the same problem but having too few seconds to come up with a solution. He slapped his chair’s panel again. “Bridge to engineering. Dave, can you get us going a little bit faster?”

“Oh sure,” Dave responded. “We’re only going fifteen hundred times the speed of light. Centuries of physics told us this was a terrible idea as it is and yet here we are and we’re doing it and we’re fine but you want a little more so that’s cool.”

“Please?” At that moment, John couldn’t really deal with Dave’s snark, and his constant tone of overwhelming nonchalance wasn’t helping anything, either. His attitude seemed to help him get the job done, sure, but was now really the time to be acting like that?

“Are you pleading with me or with science? Because pleading with science has a much better chance of working. People used to plead with science way more than they do now, over things like could science please say that the sun orbits the earth, or could science please say that humans have no genetic connection to monkeys whatsoever, or could science please let us build engines out of monopolar magnets, or could science please stop blond engineers from having such rhythmic mastery.”

“Is your mindless chattering always this extensive?” Equius said louder than he intended.

“Is your vibe always this equestrian? I mean pedestrian? Sorry bout that whoops.”

“Can it, Terran,” Eridan bellowed. “You engineers are all doin wway too much self-exultations considerin you’re all such cowwards an cant evven deal wwith your –“

“Stop talking right now,” John snapped. He knew where Eridan was going, and he knew it was going to cross the line not just from Dave’s perspective, but for most of the people on the bridge. The subject he was about to broach was sensitive for most of the cadets, because it was part of a larger, darker, more far-reaching issue: the Aradiabot project itself may have been a terrible idea.

After a painful pause, Dave went on. “Maximum warp means maximum warp. We’re at warp 9 right now. If I could increase the warp factor by one, we’d be at warp ten also known as TRUE UNIVERSAL TELEPORTATION. We could just hop to Andromeda it’d be that simple.”

“We don’t need that much,” John said. “Just a little more would be perfect.”

“I guess what I should say is I’m givin it all she’s got, captain.”

“Alright.”

“And John I really hope you haven’t put fishface prince of sunshine in a position of power or anything.”

John glanced at Eridan, who didn’t visibly react. “He’s here because he’s studying xenopsychology, right? I figure I’d make him ship’s counselor.”

“Oh good I was worried he might have the chance to make everyone’s emotional problems worse so that’s a relief.”

John badly wanted to engage Dave in witty banter, but he was on the clock, and everyone was forming their first impression of him as captain. “Your concern is noted, Dave. Thanks for keeping everything running. Egbert out.”

“Captain,” Rose called out. “I think I’ve discovered the solution you want.”

“Okay, tell us about it.” John and Karkat both popped up and made to peer over Rose’s console.

“Well, as thrilling as it’s been to use emergency-oriented and highly developed androids on a perfectly safe mission like mapping an area dubiously outside of explored space, it may actually have some practical applications, as well. When we were passing through this sector before, we encountered a large star with intense solar storms. We happen to have executed a detailed analysis of the storm patterns and could weave through the plasma with little trouble. A ship as large as theirs, however, would be unable to avoid it all.”

They glanced at the view screen. The enemy ship was growing ever closer, and by now appeared almost spherical.

“It’s a bit risky,” Vriska said. “I’m still not used to flying starships.”

John turned to her. “You’ve piloted tons of shuttles before, Vriska! You’re one of the best and I know you can do this.”

Vriska’s face turned bright blue. “Thank yoooooooou!”

There wasn’t much more Vriska could have done to restore John’s faith in her in that moment than say those words in that cadence. John knew that drawing out a word that much could only mean Vriska was, at the worst, cautiously optimistic.

“Okay, Rose,” John said. “Send the data you have and the coordinates of the star to Vriska. Vriska, you know what to do. Keep us at maximum warp.”

\---------------------------------

They fell out of warp towards the middle of the star system. The captain’s legs were shaking now, but he felt like he was keeping his composure well enough, as far as the crew could see.

“Vriska, head in quick as you can without hitting anything. Terezi and Jade, keep a close watch on the enemy when it comes in. If you see an opening, shoot right away. And Terezi, I need shields at maximum.”

“AYE, SIR! Shields at maximum!”

“Divert power from all unnecessary systems to the aft shields.”

“Done and done!”

Terezi’s enthusiasm was lightening the atmosphere. Exactly what John needed. His mood was actually improving.

“Captain, the enemy just dropped out of warp and it looks like they’re charging weapons,” Jade reported.

Well, so much for that.

Vriska skillfully maneuvered the Zephyr through rings of plasma. The spherical alien ship was closing fast now, but was already hitting the plasma and was suffering visible damage from it.

“Get us in as close as you can, Vriska.”

“Working on it!”

“The shields are starting to take some damage from the heat, Captain,” Rose said.

The Zephyr twisted through the plasma ejections, which were growing more intense and frequent. The alien vessel gave chase. It was still unable to avoid the plasma. Parts of its surface were chipping away.

“Firing at the exposed part of the ship!” Jade yelled with glee.

“Yeah, do it!” John assented.

A torpedo shot from the aft side of the Zephyr’s handle towards the sphere. Square on target within seconds. Its detonation tore a decent chunk from the alien hull.

“We’re about as close as we can get!” Vriska said. “Shields steady at 90%.”

“Captain, they are about to launch a torpedo.”

Sure enough, a single, cylindrical object shot itself from the center of the enemy sphere. It was small; certainly too small to take out a bridge, right? It couldn’t have been the same weapon.

“Arm phasers!” John ordered. “Shoot that thing!”

The aft phasers fired. Part of the enemy weapon was vaporized. The central section of it, somehow, was not damaged. It kept moving forward, headed for the lower sections of the Zephyr.

“Brace for impact!” John gripped the edge of his chair. Did it matter? Was this the end?

BRRAPOW!

They lurched forward. The whole bridge seemed to bounce. Jade’s head slammed against her console on the rebound, and she fell to the ground in a grunt of pain. Feferi Peixes quickly flew into action, checking Jade’s injury and trying to treat it. The ship continued to rumble, alarms blared, and a few lights in the bridge popped.

“CAPTAIN!” Terezi shouted. “WE’VE LOST IMPULSE POWER. WE’RE FALLING RIGHT INTO THE STAR!”

“GET US OUT OF HERE!” Karkat screeched.

“Vriska, readjust the ship with thrusters so it’s facing the side of the star!”

Vriska fumbled with the thrusters. “You’re not doing what I think you’re doing?”

“Go to warp!” John ordered. “Warp six! NOW!”

“NO!” Vriska stood and faced him. “If we go to warp like this, we’ll—“

“Escape the aliens and star and survive, Vriska! Do it!”

“Let me do it with thrusters! Please!”

“NO! Just go! We’re already too close to the star!”

John was terrified for a moment that Vriska wouldn’t obey. It was like she said; no matter how the situation went, it wouldn’t work out in the long run. But she returned to her seat and the warp engines whirred into place. The ship continued falling perilously towards the star.

“Shields at 10%, captain!”

“Go, go, go!”

Along came the kick. As the Zephyr went to warp, it narrowly passed the star, but they escaped and didn’t collide with anything. Everyone took a moment to breathe before some of them, especially Vriska, began to feel their hearts sink in realization.

Karkat was oblivious at first. “Where is the enemy ship now?”

“Gone,” Vriska said quietly.

“Gone like DESTROYED?”

“No,” Vriska sighed. “Just not here now.” She spun in her chair to face the two commanding cadets. “I warned you about going to warp, and now look what happened!”

Karkat began to sense that they were in a worse situation than he realized. “What… are you talking about?”

John sighed. “When a smaller object, like a starship, heads right at something massive and is at high-warp speed, it usually undergoes a certain… effect. Large objects tear holes in spacetime, you know? So heading at them so quickly can cause temporal anomalies.”

“It’s part of the slingshot effect,” Vriska said. “Discovered by one James T. Kirk.”

“SO?”

“…So… we just traveled through time.”


	2. Target Practice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The crew comes to terms with their new placement in time. Meanwhile, Eridan and Kanaya discuss matters of the heart.

Jade woke up in the sickbay to the sound of bouncing back.

She didn’t feel much pain at all at first, but her brain had a little bit of trouble catching up to her surroundings. In the corner, out of her field of vision, she heard Feferi’s voice.

“Thanks for listening, Thirty Eight! Hopefully we can talk later over dinner?”

“I don’t eat dinner but I don’t see why not.”

“Great! Looks like Jade just woke up. Thirty Eight, give a report to the captain. I’ll take care of the patient.”

“Okay.”

Feferi appeared in Jade’s view. “Hello! How are you feeling?”

“Uh… a bit dizzy.”

“No surprise, you hit your head hard.” Feferi brought out a medical tricorder and started scanning Jade’s brain.

“What happened?” Jade finally noticed that the Zephyr was no longer in red alert. They’d made it, somehow.

“We sent ourselves back in time, about… sixty human years, I think? The captain hasn’t decided what to do next. But we’re alive! Which is nice. I think I’m a lot more in my element when I’m alive.”

Jade tried to shake out some of her fogginess. “What… uh… what about the aliens?”

“The antisocial sphere monstrosity? They didn’t come with us. They were too busy being glubbed by all that plasma to chase us.”

Jade nodded lightly, then grabbed her head. “Oof, feels like I’m having a migraine!”

“I’ll get you something for that.” Feferi bounced away. “You know, I kept telling myself, I know I have a ton of work to do before I can be a certified doctor, but I could do the work just as well as anyone with a medical license. And now, here I am! Nine sweeps old and chief medical officer of a STARSHIP!”

Jade winced when Feferi yelled “STARSHIP”, but Feferi didn’t notice. The shining new CMO came back with a hypospray and injected it into Jade’s neck. The relief was nearly immediate.

“Urgh, thanks, Doc. So do you mind if I ask what you were talking about with that Aradiabot?”

“Oh!” Feferi’s face brightened to Tyrian red. “Yeah. Um. Well, did you know that Eridan and I were in a moiraillegiance together?”

“That’s a type of troll romance, right?”

“Right!” At this point, Feferi was happy that Jade even knew what it was and was willing to acknowledge its existence. Most humans seemed to have a pretty difficult time with the trolls’ notions of romance, although the four humans on the Zephyr had grown to be exceptions. “Well, he and I broke up a few days ago.”

“Oh! I’m sorry to hear that.”

“No, it’s fine!” Feferi picked up a PADD and started flipping through a few files. “I mean, it was my decision. But I’ve been kind of lonely and all the last few days, and it’s not like there are that many fish in the sea when we’re out here. So I decided to try and start a new moiraillegiance with Aradiabot Thirty Eight for now.”

“Huh.” Jade hadn’t considered that the androids were capable of troll romance, but it made sense to the design of an emergency android. If someone was to be alone on a long-term mission and wound up with only Aradiabots for company, it would be useful for the Aradiabots to provide some form of companionship. Plus, the bots were based on a real troll’s personality, after all. They probably had inherited her taste in people, in some capacity or another.

“It’ll be a good test of if they’re any good at moiraillegiance. For all I know, I could stick with her for sweeps to come!” Feferi seemed genuinely delighted at the thought. “Oh, but I’m getting WAAAAAY ahead of myself. We haven’t even started anything yet. I just always get so EXCITED over new relationships.”

Jade slowly stood herself up. “Good luck there, then! I should probably report to the captain if he’s trying to figure out what to do next.”

“Yes! Yes!” Feferi gave her a friendly wave. “You are… free to go!”

Jade left the sickbay, feeling much better but still a little shaken. Feferi pumped her fist slightly. “Yes! First patient: total success!”

********

“Computer, Locate Lieutenant Ampora.”

“Lieutenant Ampora is on Holodeck 2.”

“How Convenient As I Am Already Very Near There.”

The computer made a conclusive beep, as if in understanding. Kanaya made the ten paces into Holodeck 2.

Eridan was, unsurprisingly, engaged in phaser target practice. He spent a lot of his time in target practice, especially when he was in a particularly bad mood. And he was very good at it.

“Hey, Kan,” he said, firing at a target below and in front of him. The phaser target practice program generated random, small targets on a black dome, and the player stood in a lowered platform at the center of the dome.

“Eridan, I Am Concerned About The Amount Of Time You Are Spending In This Simulation.”

“Concerned, are ya?” Eridan continued firing, not distracted or visibly affected by Kanaya’s statement or presence. “Is good an proper preparation for a showwdowwn with the mightiest of all forces a discord in this univverse a cause for concern? Wwould you rather i lay dowwn my arms in the face of the enemy? Let us all get wwiped out like vvermin?”

“That Is A Very Good Reason For The Use Of This Phaser Training Exercise.”

“Glad you understand.”

“I Did Not Say That I Believed That It Is Your Real Reason For Being Here However.”

Eridan didn’t respond. Two more targets were hit with pinpoint accuracy.

“You Are Still Upset About Feferi.”

“Of course im still fuckin upset about Fef and fuckin thank you for bringin it up and pouring preservvation granules on an open wwound.”

“This Strikes Me As An Inappropriate Reaction To The Situation.”

“It’s only been wwhat like three fuckin days but yes thank you also for tellin me I don’t have the right to be fuckin heartbroken about losing the most important person in my life.”

“It Is Not The Heartbreak That Is The Issue,” Kanaya said sternly. “It Is The Anger I Am Worried About.”

“Computer, freeze program.”

The lighted targets stopped appearing. Eridan turned to Kanaya.

“Wwhat did you just say?”

“You Are Too Angry About Your Breakup.”

Eridan sized her up as if looking at her for the first time. He had known her since childhood, and in that time she’d been a supportive friend through thick and thin. But this was the first time in a very long time she’d raised concerns about his anger level. He wasn’t sure how to feel about it.

“Rest assured that the rage in my blood is akin to that felt by the foulest and greatest predator beasts from the depths of the oceans and tunnels on evvery planet in the quadrant. Rest assured also that evvery iota of my fury is directed at myself. There aint anyone else to blame, Kan. Not Fef, not… anyone else. Just me. I lost her and I just havve to deal wwith it.”

“A Wise Approach.”

“Wwell i don’t remember the captain makin you counselor but thanks anywway. Computer, resume.”

The target practice program continued. Eridan never allowed any target to last longer than one second. Kanaya contented herself with observing his progress for a while.

“Is there somethin else you needed to talk about or are you just wwatchin me shoot stuff?” Eridan asked after a short time.

“I Wondered If You Had Planned To Find A Matesprit In The Near Future.”

“Do you figure I need one?”

“I Felt That It Might Help You Through Your Breakup.”

“Computer, increase difficulty levvel.”

“Unable to comply,” the computer’s voice responded. “No higher setting exists in this program.”

Eridan snarled, so irritated by the lack of a harder simulation that his concentration broke and he missed a target for the first time. “Freeze program.”

The targets ceased once more.

“Kan, in a bygone era of our wworld, trolls wwould be killed if they couldn’t find a matesprit an kismesis wwithin a certain time. Ivve nevver had a matesprit. Not once. I don’t really have anythin ta offer one. I think about that a lot. If I’d been born back then, I wwoulda died for sure. It’d be a fuckin travvesty.”

“It Really Would Be A Trawesty,” Kanaya said. “However I Do Think Your Priorities Would Be Different For The Sake Of Your Survival.”

“Fuckin right they’d be different. I’d be dowwnright unrecognizable compared to the troll you see mercilessly attacking simulations. Hell, wwe’d all be completely different all around.”

“What I Mean Is That You Might Have Even Considered A Matespritship With Feferi.”

Eridan looked scandalized. “A fuckin matespritship with Fef? Kan you gotta be fuckin jokin. She wwas a perfect moirail but she… she aint matesprit material for me to say the least. Not evven close.”

Kanaya was surprised by his reaction. “What Makes You So Certain?”

“Don’t wworry about that, just trust me, it’ll nevver happen. Anywway i should probably talk about something other than my relationships an the lack of em. It makes me an appalling convversationalist.”

“It Is All You Think About Aside From Your Work.”

“Youre damn right about that but I hope you don’t see that as a bad thing. Cause that’s just how I am ovver the last swweep or twwo. On a related subject, how are things wwith you an rose?”

“Is That Related To Quadrants Or To Your Work?”

“Both.”

It was Kanaya’s turn to scowl. “I Am Not Entirely Comfortable With Your Scrutiny.”

“Ahh but this is the first romance betwween human an troll, Kan. It has limitless implications for studyin the psychology a both species. Wwe’re all lookin at the twwo a you cause if things wwork out okay, it opens up an entirely new wworld a troll-human quadrantship.”

“Only Matespritships As The Other Quadrants Are Not Concepts Humans Share.”

“Correction: they aint concepts in human culture.  Big difference. Wwe still gotta find out if humans can learn to feel the other quadrants.”

Eridan stared off wistfully, immediately distracted by wild daydreams Kanaya couldn’t begin to fathom.

“Anywway, you nevver answwered my question.”

“Oh! Today Is The Observance Of One Earth Year’s Passage Since Our Relationship’s Beginning. We Plan To Meet In Her Quarters After The Memorial Service Tonight.”

“Oh yeah the memorial service. I forgot that wwas happenin. But wwait. Isn’t that scheduled for 2000 hours?”

(That is military time, not the projected length of the service.)

Kanaya nodded timidly. Eridan’s lips pursed.

“You twwo are gonna—”

“No! Yes! Probably. I Am Not Sure.” Kanaya gave an embarrassed grin.

Eridan’s eyes narrowed, and he suppressed a smile. “Wwell i hope you havve a really good time no matter wwhat happens. See you at the memorial servvice. If you don’t mind, though, I’m gonna get back to practice. Computer, resume.”

*******

“I need you to keep analyzing that. See if you can find any more answers.”

“That won’t be a purroblem.”

John and Nepeta had just arrived at the outside of the engineering area, and had stopped so they could finish their conversation without Sollux Captor, one of the engineers, yelling at them to fuck off.

“It’s really promising,” John said. “That’s the best thing we have for figuring out what happened to us. But I want to know how it got here.” He was pointing at a small object Nepeta was holding: a black cube that fit in her hand and had a number of silver contours on its surface.

“Yesfur,” Nepeta said, looking into engineering as if trying to catch a glimpse of something.

“Something wrong?” John asked.

“No…” she looked away. “It’s just… Captain, I’m very worried about Tavros.”

“Hm.” John looked down.

“This has all been very hard on him and I haven’t seen him in a while.”

“Well,” John said, trying not to raise his voice, “I bet he’s fine right now. Probably celebrating now that my dad’s dead.”

“Oh, John, don’t say that!” Nepeta glowered at him. “Your father was an excellent captain and everything he did was understandable. He was faced with a tough decision and didn’t want to risk making the wrong answer. Okay?”

John nodded.

“Tavros probably doesn’t hold anything against your father. The rest of us sure don’t!”

John let out a sigh. “Well, problem is, nothing’s changed for Tavros.”

“Yet.”                                                                      

He looked back at her again. “What the hell do you mean by that?”

“Aren’t you planning to approve of the purrocedure?”

John stared off in frustration, not knowing what to say for a moment. “My dad blocked his procedure because Starfleet regulations wouldn’t allow it in his view.”

“We’re far away from Starfleas,” Nepeta said. “You won’t get any fallout from giving him the human thumbs up.”

“Yes, but… I’ve just taken command of this ship, and what kind of thing will it say about me if one of my first actions as captain is to approve a medical procedure the last captain blocked?”

“Dunno,” Nepeta said. “Could mean you’re taking steps towards better relationships with trolls.”

“Hm.” John looked back at her again. “Yknow, I’ve been meaning to talk to you about something.”

“Yeeees?”

“I think you’d be a qualified security chief. Er, claw-ified security chief.”

“Ahh!” Nepeta was ecstatic at his cat pun, and secondarily at the prospect of a promotion. “But, wait, Equius is the security chief.”

“He just started that job yesterday,” John responded. “Plus, I’m thinking I need to move him to something more up his alley.”

“You have something like that fur him?”

“Of course.” John thought for a moment. “You two are a thing, right?”

“Moirails, yes,” Nepeta said.

“I’m asking as your friend and as your captain. Is that going well?”

Nepeta grinned. “Of course. We’re a purrfect match.”

“HEY. Who’2 out there?”

An engineer named Sollux Captor stepped out to evaluate them. He was extremely slender and, unlike the other trolls, had four horns instead of two. There wasn’t much else that could be said about him because, at that moment, he was wearing a rectangular mask that covered his entire face.

“The captain,” he said. “I wa2 wondering when you’d 2how up. And Nepeta— ”

“I want to see Tavros,” Nepeta said adamantly.

“He i2n’t 2eeing anyone at the moment,” Sollux said firmly. “Now fuck off.”

“Nepeta,” John said, “it might be a good idea not to worry about Tavros for now.”

Nepeta gave a small snort. “Just let him know I was looking for him.” She walked off.

“I think I will do that,” Sollux said to John. “Anyway, what i2 it you wanted?”

“I need to talk to the chief engineer,” John said.

“He’2 al2o not 2eeing anyone.”

“Too bad I’m the captain, then, huh?” John said, walking into engineering before Sollux could get in another word.

Dave Strider had heard John approaching and was staring down at the warp engine’s control panel, with his back to John.

“Mr. Strider!”

“…Captain.”

John noticed that Dave wasn’t touching the panel whatsoever. His façade of productivity was flimsy at best.

“Wanted to update you myself,” John said. “I’ve decided not to contact Starfleet and to try to get back to our own time without help.”

“That’ll be fuckin tough, Captain,” Sollux said. “The calculation2 for rever2e time travel are ab2urd, not to mention all the repair2 we’ll have to make. Do you actually know what you’re doing?”

“Hey, Sollux,” John replied. “Why are you still wearing that mask?”

“Why? I… uh…”

“Shouldn’t you be wearing your glasses instead?”

Sollux stammered even more. “I wa2… uh… I wa2 under order2 not to… um… wear tho2e.”

“Go put on your glasses. That’s an order.”

Sollux’s face wasn’t visible, but his body language showed that he was now in a fantastic mood. “Ye2, 2ir!” He popped away.

John turned to Dave again. “So I’ll be expecting you to be working the calculations to get us back to our own time.”

“Sure, no problem,” Dave said, “but like Sollux said we won’t be able to do anything until we’ve repaired the whole ship back to normal, which will take maybe half a space year without some good resources. We’re gonna be stuck on this trek for a while.”

That was what John expected to hear, minus the ‘space year’ bit. “Do you need some extra Aradiabots on the job?”

“That’d help.” Dave still wasn’t looking at John.

“Can I do anything else for you?”

“Dunno.”

“There’s a memorial service for the lost crew members tonight. We’ll have a bio for all three of them, including your brother. Figured you’d want to come.”

“Dunno about that one, either, man.”

John considered what he was about to say for a moment. Asking Sollux to put on his preferred glasses was one thing, since other trolls aboard like Equius and Terezi regularly wore their own glasses that were there for something other than fixing near- or far-sightedness. However, Starfleet protocol was much clearer in its ban of antiquated human accessories. The only type of human glasses allowed in Starfleet were the ones that correct vision, like the ones John and Jade both wore, and that was only in the case of someone who responded poorly to the standard treatment.

“Dave, you should go put on your glasses, too.”

“…My shades? You mean it?”

“Of course.”

“Your dad was adamant that i’m not— ”

“I’m not my dad. This is my call.”

“…Thank you.”

“That’s all I have to talk to you about. See you sometime!” John began walking away.

“Hey john.”

“What?” John stopped in place and didn’t look back at Dave.

“I’ll be at the memorial.”

John nodded. “I understand. Glad to hear it.” He kept walking forward, not knowing that Dave had finally turned to try to make eye contact with him.

***********

A short while before the service, Karkat sat in his quarters, in the nude, contemplating his fingertips. He was in a better mood than he’d been for some time, but, as always at moments like this, it was coming with a feeling of terrible dread.

Terezi emerged from his bathroom (fully clothed) and sat next to him.

“Hey.” she said.

“Hey.”

“Is something on your mind? You seem distracted.”

“Blurgh.” Karkat rested his head on her shoulder, which was a much less risky endeavor for him than for most of his species. “No, not really.”

“I don’t BELIEVE you.” She wrapped her arm around him and began stroking his hair.

“Okay, some things are really bothering me,” he admitted, “but I have a handle on them, alright?”

“Tell me about them!”

“I don’t really feel like talking about any of it.”

“You aren’t gonna get out of this long-term. You’re gonna have to tell me this stuff sometime.”

Karkat lifted his head turned to her. “I know. I will eventually.”

She kissed him, kissed him, and kissed him a few more times. Karkat reciprocated and welcomed the reprieve. For a few extra seconds, he wasn’t worried about his mega-sized problem.

But he broke away. “So what are you doing tomorrow?”

“I’m hoping to run some simulations.” Terezi held her breath slightly. She knew he wouldn’t be happy to hear it.

And sure enough, Karkat felt his insides twist in knots. “You’re STILL WORKING on that USELESS BRICK-SUCKING ARBOR DEBRIS FEST?”

“This is IMPORTANT to me and YOU KNOW IT,” she snapped right back at him. “I KNOW you think it’s a waste of time, but I NEED to figure this stuff out for myself.”

Karkat ran his hand through his hair several times. “Glad you know what I think of that bullsh—”

“Karkat, Aradia was murdered, and unless Gamzee was the perpetrator, it was someone who is on this ship, right now.”

“Oh fuck.” Over the course of the time he’d just spent with Terezi, Karkat had managed to avoid thinking much about Gamzee. Now, his mind was once again on his lost moirail.

“Oh fuck,” Terezi echoed. “I’m sorry.”

“No, no…” Karkat tried to wave her off, but he was on the verge of sobbing for the umpteenth time that day. “I get it. You want to… catch whoever killed her.”

“You still think it was an accident, though?” Terezi asked.

“I-I don’t know what to think,” Karkat said.

Terezi kissed him on the cheek. “I know. You never do. We gotta go soon, though, okay?”

He nodded at her.

“Good,” she said. “Now get fuckin dressed. Nobody wants to see that.”

***********

The memorial service went well and was a quiet affair. John, Dave, and Karkat, who had experienced the most severe losses, found it especially meaningful. Rose had lost her mother in the attack, too, but according to her, they weren’t close. This, of course, didn’t stop her from attending, and in fact all of the cadets were there except for one; Tavros Nitram was still nowhere to be found.

Immediately when the service was over, John had them all gather in their makeshift meeting room, since the main one was near the bridge and had been destroyed. Luckily, they had been able to procure a table long enough to fit all of the cadets.

“First thing,” John said, “I’ll have new uniforms replicated for you all tomorrow. I expect everybody to wear them. Everybody.” His eyes lingered on Eridan. The rest of them, still wearing the offensively hideous cadet uniforms, gave internal sighs of relief at this piece of news.

“Second, we have something more interesting,” John went on. “Nepeta found something neat today.”

Nepeta leaned forward. “We don’t really know what this is,” she said, holding up the cube from earlier. “But it looks like it came from the ship that attacked us.”

“What does it do?” Terezi asked.

“What part of ‘we don’t know what this thing is’ don’t you understand?” Vriska responded.

“That’s enough,” John said. “Nepeta, go on.”

“Well,” Nepeta said, undeterred by the interruption, “purreliminary scans aren’t telling us much about it, but we do know one thing.”

She placed it on the table in front of her and put her thumb on a space of its surface that seemed to be contoured to fit a standard humanoid thumb. The object flashed bright orange for three seconds, then went back to the way it was before.

“Weird,” Dave said. “My best guess is that touching it there is supposed to activate it, but it’s just broken.”

“I agree,” Nepeta said.

“This is the best intelligence we have right now,” John said. “Our guess is that it’s the thing our attackers were trying to take from us during their second strike. I bet we can use this to start trying to figure out who attacked us and what resources they have. If they’re a threat to the Federation (and it seems like they are), it’s our job to learn everything we can about them.”

“I’ll work on analyzing it,” Sollux said.

“Good. Now, there’s one more thing.” John was looking grim. “Nepeta?”

Nepeta also seemed somewhat nervous. “Today, I’ve been trying to have the internal sensors reconstruct the first hit to the Zefur on all the sections that were destroyed. I thought purrhaps we could get an idea of the kind of weapon that was used, but…”

Rather than try to keep explaining, she flipped an image onto the room’s viewport. It was Gamzee, walking down a corridor of the ship.

“Slow down playback to one tenth speed,” Nepeta ordered. Gamzee’s gait was reduced to a crawl, one foot floating through the air as if it were wet sand.

Then the image got scrambled.

“This is the only reconstruction that looks like that,” Nepeta said. “Something happened that messed with the sensors right where Gamzee was.”

“I think I can fix that,” Rose said. “Everyone, wait here. I will be back after a brief minute.”

She left, and the other cadets waited in silence for around ninety seconds before her return.

“It should be feeling better now,” she announced. “I ran a refraction algorithm on the sensor readings. Run the program again, Nepeta.”

Nepeta did so. They saw Gamzee once again, walking busily away from a turbolift.

A flash of green. Something appeared between the screen and Gamzee.

Another flash. The hallway was now empty.

Then, finally, the rapid blast from the aggressors’ weapons, vaporizing the empty hallway.

“How can that be?” Equius objected. “Shields were already up when the first weapon hit the Zephyr. There should not have been a transport.”

“However it happened,” John said, “looks like something took him off the ship.” He turned to Karkat, who was in utter shock. “I know we’ve already had a memorial service, but here’s your good news for today. It looks like Gamzee is still alive.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Track #alternative price on Tumblr to see when my updates happen!


	3. A First Time for Everything

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The morning after her first sexual encounter with Kanaya, Rose is pressed for details by an overzealous Eridan.
> 
> Meanwhile, John has his first confrontation with a crew member as captain, John has his first moment of sexual tension with a first officer as captain, and John has his first encounter with a universe-destroying monstrosity as captain.

Rose didn’t get much sleep, but that didn’t stop her from waking up feeling refreshed. The previous night had been amazing.

She didn’t want to move much, so as to not wake the deeply-sleeping Kanaya next to her. Rose took a moment to gaze at Kanaya, noting the perfect smoothness of her shoulders and the serenity of her face as she breathed slowly, cutely…

What the hell? Even the way Kanaya breathed was cute. Rose took her hand from the position it had taken atop Kanaya’s to cradle her own face with mock embarrassment. She’d managed to let herself fall way too far in love. How had she, barely old enough to be a Starfleet cadet, managed to find the perfect match for her so early in her life? Rose turned, smiling, to watch Kanaya’s breathing for a few more moments.

But she had important things to do, and she wanted to get started. Rose turned to her nightstand and pulled out a PADD, then lay back down with it next to Kanaya. She saw a circle in the corner indicating that she had a message, which was almost certainly from Eridan.

She opened her blog-writing program. Her personal blog had accrued quite an audience over the last eight or so months since Rose had started writing it. A large subculture across the Federation, as it turned out, had a keen interest in interspecies relationships of all kinds. Rose kept the blog about her experiences with Kanaya updated religiously. Without a doubt, she cared a lot for Kanaya and was always happy to have her around, but there was something about having an audience that made it all the more thrilling. Rose began typing:

“I realize that having travelled back in time sixty years, this post won’t be able to update properly until our return to our own time. Doubtless, many of my readers will begin to wonder where I’ve gone. I fear that divulging any details of the circumstances of our journey may flag the attention of temporal law enforcement, so I hope it will satisfy you, dear reader, simply to know that our displacement in time was instantaneously necessary for our survival. I do not know when we will be able to return, nor does our captain.

“But now is not the time for lamentations. Yesterday marked the 365th Earth day of my relationship with Kanaya. In our timeline, at least. I recognize that temporal shifts have prevented us from observing our first anniversary on its actual instance in time, but as we have not even been born yet in the present day, our choice in commemoration was more than sufficient for the two of us.

“As you may have surmised, our course of celebration was to finally engage in the proverbial nasty. And nasty, it was not.

“I should probably give my initial reactions here. Federation exposure to the Alternians is relatively young as a phenomenon, and the trolls with whom I am serving were the first, aside from high ambassadors and political figures, to come to Earth. As such, scientific and medical databases do not allow much insight into the full spectrum of troll physiology. I had certainly encountered a few chances to see troll genitalia over the course of a few years, working in close proximity with these eleven in a military-style environment, but that offered surprisingly little for my understanding of how they work. All I knew for certain was that sexual dimorphism is virtually nonexistent among trolls, and now I am starting to understand how that might be the case; Kanaya seemed to be equipped for simultaneous penetration. Unfortunately for her, I can only assume that the limited human physiology with which I’ve been provided was not nearly as pleasurable for her as another troll’s may have been. Not to imply that I didn’t try my hardest to compensate…”

Kanaya began stirring slightly. It would probably be some time before she was fully awake. Rose was planning to round off the blog post with a few more specific details of the encounter, but that could wait. She hadn’t yet gotten around to telling Kanaya about the blog, and she didn’t feel like now was the best time for that revelation.

Rose, of course, had been completely satisfied; she was still sore in places she loved being sore in, and she hadn’t seen herself yet, but she imagined she would need to take a dermal regenerator to her neck. With as wonderful as the previous night had been, Rose figured she could recall everything she needed to later on, and that the rest of her blog could wait.

Rose closed the editor and hit the chat notification. Sure enough, the sender of the message had been Eridan.

Conversation with caligulasAquarium

CA: i checked kans location wwith the computer as soon as i wwoke up  
CA: shes in your room so i can only assume the twwo of you finally did it  
TT: Yes.  
TT: We have engaged in coitus. Now the two of us have achieved true greatness.  
CA: excellent  
CA: wwait  
CA: wwhat do you mean by true greatness  
TT: Oh, didn’t you know?  
TT: Once a person has sexual intercourse, they’ve accomplished one of the primary goals of their lives, so they reach a new echelon in social circles.  
TT: Basically, Kanaya and I now outrank you.  
CA: interestin  
CA: is this a social concept among humans  
TT: Oh yes.  
TT: Humans have always considered those who have experienced sexual contact to be more valuable than those who have not. Especially women.  
CA: thats really wweird for me  
CA: i mean im glad things betwween you an kan havve wworked so wwell  
CA: but nevver once did i think it had any significance to your social status  
CA: nor that you might noww consider yourself my superior  
CA: i hope it wwont actually affect anythin betwween us  
TT: Oh, no, certainly not.  
TT: Just as you don’t judge me for being a land-dweller.  
CA: wwell that wwas hard for me  
CA: learnin to trust landdwwellers just as much as seadwwellers  
CA: but part a psychology is learnin ta put aside personal prejudices in pursuit of one a the noblest of sciences  
TT: Didn’t you once construct a plot for genocide?  
TT: That strikes me as slightly beyond personal prejudice.  
CA: wwe all make mistakes  
CA: anywway im just so damn fascinated by human vviewws on sexuality  
CA: first sexual orientations and noww this  
CA: humans puzzle me so fuckin much but i probably havve an entire career to figure em out  
CA: so thats good  
CA: i may need that long  
TT: It’s a perfectly attainable goal in as long as you have.  
CA: but your cultural vvalues alone vvex me to no end  
CA: howw did they evven come into place? how did vvalues representing a fusion of indivvidualism an collectivvism appear on a planet notorious for its stubborn inhabitants?  
TT: Most appeared by magic.  
CA: oh yeah im totally buyin that  
CA: spent so much buyin that i had to drain my secret latinum stash outta wwhere your thinkpan is supposed ta be  
TT: Goodness. Have you been taking insult lessons from Karkat?  
CA: magic isnt real rose  
TT: I wouldn’t be so sure.  
CA: i wwould  
TT: Well… Mainly, I would be worried that a rift might form between our new captain and yourself, if that’s how you feel about it.  
TT: He’s a big fan of all things magical.  
CA: you gotta be fuckin kiddin me right  
CA: i cant trust a guy wwhos supposed ta be leadin us and can’t evven figure out that magic is a wwaste a time  
CA: and im supposed to be havvin a session wwith him soon howw am i gonna take him seriously noww  
TT: Eridan.  
CA: oh fuck  
CA: did i just do that  
TT: You did.  
CA: oh fuck  
CA: i am the wworst counselor in the galaxy an i havvent evven started yet  
CA: i am such fuckin trash  
TT: Try not to think about it that way.  
TT: You’re still supposed to be in training to be a counselor, you’re not a professional yet. It was an honest mistake.  
CA: yeah but not divvulgin anything about your patients is basic fuckin wwisdom  
CA: an i cant evven do that right  
TT: It’s probably a mistake you’ll never make again.  
TT: You’re a pretty good learner.

caligulasAquarium has disconnected

 

Rose stared at her conversation while Kanaya continued to wake. Eridan had a relatively negative reputation with the other trolls, who seemed to have a pervasive belief that he might suddenly erupt in a violent rage directed at his fellow cadets. Rose never really got that impression with him; in the time that she’d known him, the only person she’d ever seen him angry at was himself.

“Mmph, Good Morning.” Kanaya had opened her eyes.

“G’morning, fairy princess,” Rose replied.

“What Do You Have There?”

“PADD.” Rose tossed it aside and lay sideways onto Kanaya’s shoulder. “Eridan was starting to ask questions, so I decided to deflect his interests away from our night.”

“Oh?” Kanaya asked playfully, wrapping her hand beneath Rose’s arm. “And Just How Did You Do That?”

Rose smiled. “I used only the most finely honed sarcasm in the quadrant.” She moved up, nuzzled her face into Kanaya’s cheek, and kissed it. “You are beautiful this morning.”

“So Are You. However, I Am Concerned For Your Health.”

“Concerned for my health?” That wasn’t the response Rose was expecting. “Why is that?”

“I Notice That Your Voice Is Slightly Hoarse.”

“Is it?”

“It Is Probably My Fault. I Have Recently Caused You To Shout At A Painfully High Volume.”

Rose’s hand lowered itself to Kanaya’s belly. “Mm. Well, I would hate for you to make me do it again, say, right now, wouldn’t you?”

“Oh Nooo,” Kanaya said, placing careful emphasis in her words and making sure to wink meaningfully at Rose. “That Would Really Be The Worst.”

**********

Dressed in proper command red at last, John paced the floor of his office. He didn’t know if the sensation in his stomach was from an illness or just from being too nervous. He definitely felt off, he just couldn’t place his finger on why. Absentmindedly, he grabbed a multicolored scarf from his desk. It was a prop for a magic trick of his, but it doubled as a comfort item at times like this.

The door made a bleeping sound.

“Enter,” John said.

In walked Equius Zahhak, a large and muscular troll who wore a black fabric-covered brace on his arms, which served to limit his often unwieldy strength. “You requested to see me, Captain?”

“Yes, have a seat.” John sat behind his desk, and Equius took the chair opposite him. “As you know, I’ve made Lieutenant Leijon security officer in your place.”

Equius nodded. “Am I in need of disciplinary action, in that case?”

“What?”

“Is my service unsatisfactory? Are you planning to put me in my place?”

“What? No, no. no, nothing like that, Lieutenant.” It was all still awkward and new for John. He didn’t know whether to smile or maintain a straight face, so he tried to compromise and wound up grimacing. “First, I feel like there’s something on your mind.”

Equius sputtered. “Honestly, if I wished to talk about what was on my mind, I could consult Ampora.” There was a pause before he added a hasty “Sir.”

“Nice save,” John said. “I guess I’ll be more specific, then. You seem pretty uncomfortable taking orders from certain members of this crew.”

“I’m not accustomed to the hierarchy in Starfleet.” Equius’s expression didn’t change.

“You’re not accustomed to the hierarchy? Or you’re not used to people you know suddenly becoming your superiors?”

Equius brushed back his hair. “Troll society used to be stratified based on the color of an individual’s blood. Now, most see blood color as an outdated method to determine one’s worth. However… I was raised to believe that blood color is an extremely important indicator of a person’s potential. It’s a notion I don’t believe, but it was ingrained thoroughly in my mind by my lusus. It’s not easy to ignore your upbringing at all times.”

John nodded. He was already aware that a lusus was a type of creature on Alternia with the task of raising young trolls, and that they, like trolls themselves, tended to live a very long time. It made since that Equius might be raised that way, especially if his lusus was older and had been around in more conservative times. “So you feel like you deserve more authority on this ship?”

“Yes. My instinct tells me that it’s my birthright, thanks to my high and noble blood color.”

“That works great because I had a proposal like that for you anyway.”

“Oh?” Equius perked up.

“I realized that I kind of fucked up by making you security officer. You’re the strongest guy I know, but that job just doesn’t play to your strengths like it plays to Nepeta’s. So, how would you like to be the night captain instead?”

Equius had a shocked expression and didn’t seem to register John’s offer.

“Mr. Zahhak?”

“Ah… I’m sorry. I personally feel that it doesn’t behoove a captain to use such foul language.”

“I have two things to say in response,” John replied. “One: fuck that. Two: fuck that.”

“Sir!”

John forced himself not to laugh, though with as scandalized as Equius was, it was hard to resist. “Well, you’re gonna be part time captain, so you have the chance to show me how being a captain is done if that’s something you feel strongly about.”

“Yes, sir,” Equius said. “I accept the new assignment.”

John was relieved to hear it. “Good. I’m promoting you to Lieutenant Commander, then. One more question before you go.”

Equius stood, but stayed in place. “Yes?”

“You’re in a relationship with Lieutenant Leijon, right?”

“We are moirails.”

“You care a lot about her, don’t you?”

“Of course,” Equius said with a certain layer of pride.

“I’m gonna tell you the same thing I’m telling everyone here who is in any kind of relationship. Make sure it doesn’t interfere with your duties on the ship. We’re all essentially Starfleet officers now, and we have to act like it.”

“Aye, sir. Am I dismissed?”

“Yes.” John waved him off.

Equius left in silence. He had a lot to mull over in that moment, but he certainly didn’t consider his mission more important to him than his moirail.

John returned to his pacing. He had planned to try something today to work towards more answers on the mystery of Gamzee’s disappearance, but he could not shake the feeling that something was very wrong. He had no idea what it could have been, he just knew that something was off, and that feeling terrified him. He had never felt simply certain of anything like that before.

But he was the captain. He needed to go ahead against these sorts of things.

“Egbert to Nitram,” he called out.

“Sir?” Tavros replied via communicator.

“Meet me outside Holodeck 1. I want to try a simulation and need your help.”

“Aye, sir,”

John stepped from his office into the bridge. At first, he had attributed his unease to lingering grief over the loss of his dad, then stress over his new position as Captain. But there was something more to it than that.

“CAPTAIN,” Karkat said in acknowledgement, standing from the captain’s chair. He had been left in command of the ship while John took a break.

“Stay there,” John said. “I’m on my way out.” The butterflies in his stomach intensified, or maybe it felt like they were being cyclically beamed in and out 23rd-century-style. He was nearly to the turbolift when he stopped in his tracks. “Karkat, have everyone report to the rear section of the ship. Tavros and I will be in the holodeck, but I want everyone else off the saucer section. That goes for Aradiabots, too.”

“Aye, captain. What’s going on?”

“I’m trying to keep us from all dying,” John said.

The bridge officers gave him a look of bewildered concern.

“Oh! No. That was very wrong. Oh my gosh…” John blushed and avoided eye contact with the officers. “I don’t actually think anybody’s gonna die or is at risk of death. No. I just meant I want you all to be prepared for a saucer separation. I have this weird hunch we might need it.”

“SAUCER SEPARATION?” Karkat shouted. “YOU THINK WE MIGHT NEED TO DO THAT? WHY WOULD WE—”

“Like I say, Karkat, I have a weird hunch. I mean, you saw how the view screen messed up the simulation of Gamzee’s disappearance. Well, I want to try it in the holodeck, but I have no idea what’s gonna happen in there.”

Karkat nodded. “We’ll be ready. Good luck setting up a GIANT FUCKING DEATHTRAP for yourself or whatever. I mean, uh, I don’t really think you’re about to die, either, because of the safeties in the holodeck and your occasionally INFURIATING competence and all the things that should objectively be making this NOT dangerous at ALL.”

John stepped into the turbolift. “You must really be worried,” he said. “That’s the first time you’ve complimented me.”

At the last moment, one more thought occurred to him and he stuck himself back into the bridge. “Hey, Nepeta?” he asked, peering at the security station.

“Yesfur?”

“Think you could join me?”

“Sure can.” She stood and hopped into the turbolift, door shutting behind her.

John looked at her affectionately. “How’s your first day as security officer? Or, uh, furst day, I guess.”

“It’s going fine!” Nepeta chirped. “I’m not expecting security breaches to be a big purroblem or anything, though. We aren’t getting much attention and most of the crew is gonna stay well-behaved, except maybe…” She trailed off.

“Computer, stop,” John ordered. The turbolift stopped moving and John turned to Nepeta.

“Except who?”

Nepeta gave a nervous frown. “Ampurra.”

“Eridan? Why?”

Nepeta sighed patiently but hesitantly. Her eyes closed, and her hair seemed to bristle slightly. “Well, aside from giving me the creeps, he’s a highblood. A very highblooded highblood. And now that he and Fefurri broke up, he could wind up having an awful hissyfit.”

John knew very well even before the conversation with Equius that trolls used to consider blood color equal to social status, but he was still getting used to the fact that a troll’s blood color had a huge effect on their physical and mental traits, as well. “So what makes Eridan different from other highbloods?”

“Tons of highbloods are still pretty violent. That’s how they’ve been bred, and they go on rampages even today sometimes.”

“But there are other highbloods on the ship.”

“Well, Equius is on the tail of the highblood spectrum, but he has me to help clawm him. Gamzee is a highblood, but… you knew him, you knew how he was. And Fefurri is actually royal blood, so she’s not very likely to rampage.”

“Royal blood? Not likely to rampage?” John found that hard to swallow.

“Yeah! She’s so nice, too!”

“But doesn’t that mean she’s descended straight from the bloodline of your old Empress?”

Nepeta paused. She hadn’t really considered that John was thinking of the Empress. “Well, the Empurress’s reign was a lot bloodier than what we had after it—”

“No kidding.”

“…but she wasn’t ever hands on with her destruction. Over the last few centuries we trolls have been made to believe that the Empurress was some kind of monster, and she may have been, but when you get right down to it, she really had her act together. She was always in control of her planet and herself.”

“Until the Jem’Hadar attacked.”

“Well… yeah, until that. The point I’m trying to make is that I don’t think Fefurri’s ancestry makes her prone to that sort of thing at all.”

John looked up pensively. “Resume,” he said to the turbolift, and they continued onwards.

“So you think Eridan is the most likely to do something like that?” he asked after a moment.

“For as long as he doesn’t have a moirail, yes.”

The door opened and they stepped out.

“Nepeta,” John began, “what do you think of how we’re doing right now? Like, in general? There’s a lot of weird shit going on and we’re kinda lost on what it is we’re supposed to accomplish, yknow?”

“Yes, that’s true,” Nepeta replied. “But I’m not too worried about it. We have me and Equikitty and a bunch of furriends that I trust, and most of all, we have you as captain! Of course we’ll be fine!”

John felt himself blushing again. “Well, thanks, Nepeta.”

In the next instant, John’s vision was swarmed by Sollux Captor, wearing his red and blue glasses, as was his preference.

“Why are you ordering TV off the engineering deck?” he asked in an accusatory tone.

“Please tell me you didn’t stop him from following my orders, Sollux,” John said.

“Of cour2e I didn’t. An2wer the fucking que2tion.”

“You need to get off the saucer section. We’re evacuating.”

“That’2 right,” Sollux said, “you think we might need to do a 2aucer 2eparation. That’2 a trick I haven’t 2een before.” Sollux backed down from his confrontational posture, smiling and looking up as if deep in thought. “If I’m right, 2ince the 2aucer 2ection and lower 2ection have different engine and weapon2 2y2tem2, the idea i2 to evacuate a2 many people a2 po22ible to the le22 tactically relevant 2ection, 2eparate the two 2ection2, and have tho2e people get to 2afety while the other 2ection fight2 off enemy force2.”

“That’s… generally the reason for ordering a saucer separation on this class of ship, yeah.”

“Are we planning to be attacked?”

“No.”

“2o why i2 Tavro2 here?”

John was getting a little impatient. “I want to run a holodeck simulation of Gamzee’s disappearance. I need Tavros to help me with it.”

“Why i2 that a big enough deal to merit a 2aucer 2eparation?”

“It shouldn’t be,” John said. “I dunno, I’m just getting a bad vibe here. That’s also why I brought Nepeta along, I want her to monitor this stuff and intervene if she needs to.”

“Okay,” Sollux said, “you’ve been captain of the Zephyr for two day2. In that time, you’ve 2aved u2 all from certain peril and violated 2tarfleet protocol for Dave’2 and my 2ake2. A2 far a2 I’m concerned, you’re doing a great job. Your rea2oning here i2n’t perfect, but it’2 pa22able and I tru2t you enough to buy it. I ju2t have one que2tion.”

“What’s that?” John asked.

“Hypothetically, if we have to 2eparate the 2aucer from the re2t of the 2hip…”

“Yeah?”

“And you’re in the holodeck, and Tavro2 i2 in the holodeck, and Nepeta i2 monitoring the holodeck, who will be flying the 2aucer?”

“…Oh, right.”

“Yeah.” Sollux grinned. “2o are you 2ure you want me to evacuate?”

John started walking towards the holodeck again. “Mr. Captor,” he said decisively, “if we engage the saucer separation, we’ll need someone on the saucer’s impulse engines. Stand by to take control of them if it comes to that.”

“Aye, 2ir,” Sollux said cheerfully. He stopped at a nearby computer and brought up the engine controls while John and Nepeta walked on.

When they got to the holodeck, Tavros Nitram was already sitting in front of the door in his wheelchair. Tavros was a smaller than average troll, with horns wider than his shoulders and an air of perpetual discomfort.

“Hey,” he called out to them.

“Hiya, Tavros!” John said. He’d barely even seen Tavros since the accident that left him paralyzed, one whose circumstances were still unclear.

“Hey there!” Nepeta was also enthusiastic about finally seeing Tavros again. “How have things been going for you?”

“Uh, slowly, and,,, nonwalkingly,”

“Egbert to Vantas.”

“Vantas here,” Karkat responded.

“Is everyone in the rear section of the ship?”

“Almost, sir. LOTS of Aradiabots to move. Two more minutes.”

“I can finish setting the simulation up,” Nepeta offered Tavros.

“Oh,,, sure, thanks, Nepeta,”

John turned to him. “So, how did you get injured, again?”

“Uh, I’d really rather not, go into that,”

John left that one alone, but he made a mental note to ask the others what they knew. “And so you can’t get them treated medically?”

Tavros lifted his pant legs, revealing ankles that were practically burnt to a crisp.

Yikes, John thought to himself.

Tavros spoke: “It’s a cultural standard, for trolls to remove their ‘useless’ body parts and get a prosthesis, anyway, But, Starfleet regulations don’t allow that,”

“It’s a good thing there are no officially instated Starfleet officers around, then, huh?”

“Wait, What,”

John kept a straight face. “I’ll ask Equius and Feferi to go ahead with the operation to replace your legs.”

“Wow,,,” Tavros offered a week smile. “But, all the same, i’m not sure yet, about having—”

“Think this will work, John?” Nepeta asked.

“No idea.”

“We’re ready,” Karkat’s voice said.

“Stand by,” John replied. “Tavros, follow me in. Nepeta, stay out here, but keep an eye on everything. Cut the power if something happens.”

“Yesfur.”

John and Tavros entered the holodeck. The simulation was ready to begin; they were in an upper deck corridor, and Gamzee’s form was frozen in a walking position.

“Computer,” John said, “begin simulation at one thirtieth speed.”

Gamzee began walking forward at a painful crawl. John watched vigilantly; he wasn’t going to allow impatience to let him miss any details.

The first flash of green light came. John didn’t notice anything coming after it at first, but Gamzee’s jaw dropped in slow motion, and he began blinking rapidly, or at least rapidly for 1/30th speed.

Then John saw it. A green form, something that looked a great deal like a humanoid’s set of nerves, was slowly coming together, left hand outstretched towards Gamzee. Gradually, the green body completed itself, and an overcoat materialized around it.

“Computer, freeze program!”

The motion stopped. John walked forward, squeezing past this intruder’s image, to get a good look at him.

As humanoids go, he was hugely muscular. His eyes were bizarre looking things, differently colored from each other and with differently shaped irises. He had high cheekbones, a golden tooth, multicolored stripes running the lapels of his overcoat, and…

John thought he saw something moving, but it was nothing. Multicolored stripes running the lapels of his overcoat, and a thin peg leg. He held a golden cane in his right arm, the same side as his peg leg. And those eyes. John stepped closer. He somehow thought they had been different colors before, but he decided that was just an effect the busy clothes were playing on his mind. The eyes had… numbers for pupils? And one of them was solid, but the other had a str—

Nope they definitely just changed.

John stumbled backwards. “FREEZE PROGRAM!” he shrieked. The intruder’s eyes only continued alternating, more rapidly now.

“COMPUTER! END PROGRAM!”

The corridor disappeared, leaving the holodeck’s basic green grid behind, but the intruder was still there. His eyes were still changing. And they moved their gaze to John.

SLAM!

WHUMP!

John had been whacked across the chest by the intruder’s cane and flew into the wall. John could barely feel anything, but from the sound of it and the trouble he was now having with breathing, he guessed he had a few broken ribs.

Saucer separation would be nice, he thought.

On top of everything, he felt himself lurching to the side. The whole room had shifted, and it could only be the result of an impact on the outside of the ship.

“VANTAS TO THE CAPTAIN. WE’RE UNDER ATTACK. GET TO THE BRIDGE RIGHT FUCKING NOW.”

The intruder took three massive strides, leaned over John’s crumpled body, and leered down at him.

“RED ALERT. DUMB HUMAN MALE.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> How's it looking? This chapter introduces a lot of subplots, but I'm thinking I'll be able to include, like, reminders at the beginning of chapters where they're gonna show up or something
> 
> This I think is a MUCH stronger than the first two chapters but it's tough to say?? what do you all think


	4. A Worldbuilding Interlude

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An explanation of how the trolls fit into the Star Trek universe.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you don't wanna bother reading this skip to the end notes for a tldr

Who are the trolls? What is their planet like? Why are they the way they are? Any human observer would be bursting with questions, so perhaps it’s time to provide some answers.

The planet of Alternia is located deep in the Gamma Quadrant, and its history has never known peace. From the beginning of its recorded history, it was ruled under the iron fist of an Empress. The Empress was a powerful sea-dwelling fuchsia-blooded troll, characterized by strange, supernatural powers of life-giving and mind control. Her reign was ruthless and lasted for many millennia; the people remained in inert fear of her power, her tyrannical generals, and her companion creature, Gl’bgolyb, which had the potential to instantly massacre billions of trolls if it was so ordered.

Under the Empress, society was entirely divided by blood color; low-blooded trolls were more numerous and only naturally lived for around forty Earth years, where the “heightening” of blood color meant an increasingly rarer population, a higher status in society, and an exponentially longer natural life expectancy. That being said, very few trolls actually found themselves dying of natural causes. Most who weren’t killed by the Subjugglators for some reason or other killed each other in the race to survive.

But eventually, the era of the Empress ended. The Dominion, itself a powerful empire from the Gamma Quadrant, became highly interested in Alternia, and sent a large army to conquer it. A legion of Dominion Jem’Hadar nearly wiped out the Subjugglators, and Gl’bgolyb was quietly subdued. Recognizing that she was defeated, the Empress disappeared, and Alternia fell into the hands of the Dominion.

Now, the Dominion wasn’t exactly known for being kind and merciful, but Alternian society managed to improve under Dominion rule. The Founders of the Dominion prefer a much calmer sort of order; as such, they did away with the plentiful executions and caste system that dominated Alternian life. The Founders were fascinated by the trolls’ unusual breeding patterns and behaviors. Studies commenced on the implications of their breeding for the cloning process of the Dominion’s Jem’Hadar and Vorta, and their romantic quadrants on the power structures of Dominion armies. On top of that, the trolls’ sopor slime, a previously necessary antianxiety agent, found a new use as a minor ingredient of Ketracel-white, the drug that nourishes the Jem’Hadar in place of food. With all of this in mind, trolls became a respected part of the Dominion. They were still outranked by Vorta and Jem’Hadar (and Founders, of course, that should go without saying), but they weren’t subjected to nearly the sort of powerlessness they were used to under the Empress. In fact, it became a priority in Dominion medical science to investigate how to expand the lifespan of lowblooded trolls. Within decades, lifespan by blood color was far more even. Hardly equal, but much closer to it.

The trolls remained a part of the Dominion for nearly a thousand sweeps, until after the war between the Federation and the Dominion. That war’s progression is much more commonly known: a stable wormhole was discovered connecting Dominion space and Bajoran space (near the Federation-Cardassian border), and two civilizations, who would have taken hundreds of sweeps to find each other by normal means, were suddenly at each other’s necks. The irony of this war was that it left almost no effect on the power of the Federation or the Dominion when it was done compared to when it had started, but word of the Federation had reached Alternia, and the wheels were already starting to turn.

Many trolls were still followers of an old Alternian spiritual leader called the Signless, whose career began during the reign of the Empress. The Signless preached that every troll was a “whole person,” and therefore that every troll should be treated the way the highest of highbloods were treated. This brought a revolutionary new wave of pacifism and universal respect to the Empress’s Alternia that endured even through Dominion rule. The Signless was still alive for about one sweep after the Dominion takeover, and at one point a close follower of his pointed out that now, not even highbloods were treated as the most valued members of society. The Signless agreed, but said that the trolls should content themselves with their situation for the time being. Someday, he assured them all, every troll would be treated as equals by their contemporaries, and they should be vigilant for that time.

“Our status must descend before it can ascend,” he told them.

And so, when his followers so many sweeps later heard of the Federation, where each citizen was treated equally regardless of species and size, where they attempted rescue operations for the sake of a single person, where they refused to even carry out executions of political prisoners because they considered each life too sacred, an immediate consensus was reached. The followers knew that this was the place where trolls would be treated as well as they were expected to treat each other, possibly even better.

These trolls set out to convince as many other people as they could to join the effort to break from the Dominion and join the Federation. The faith was already shared by a substantial portion of the population, but not quite a majority.

The movement had to proceed quietly, so that they would not be punished for treason by the Founders. Discreteness was key, and fortunately it was something the trolls were adept at. Usually. Sometimes, word of the movement was let slip to an unsympathetic troll, but luckily no such troll wanted to be responsible for the eradication of half or more of their own race, so whispers of an uprising never reached the ears of Dominion authorities. Eventually, the church’s record-keeping found that three quarters of the population had assented to the switch, which was sufficient support to spur the trolls’ self-governing body into action.

The next step was to convince the Federation to take them in. A delegation was sent, led by an old and extremely clever troll called Mindfang. Mindfang traveled to the Alpha Quadrant through the wormhole, docked at the Federation/Bajoran joint station Deep Space Nine, and requested to meet with Federation authorities there.

A delegation from Earth arrived to meet her, and she set her terms plainly: the Federation would provide asylum for the entire planet of Alternia, which would gain full membership in the Federation. It was bold and unprecedented, but the Federation delegates were eventually convinced (although rumors abound about whether the means of persuasion were legitimate).

The Federation contacted the Dominion, who expressed surprise at the notion. Weren’t the trolls among their most loyal citizens? The revelation that Alternia wished to leave the Dominion brought the Founders an enormous sense of disillusionment. Perhaps, they thought, they would need to reconsider their means of control, if even the trolls wanted out.

In the meantime, the Founders agreed and amended their treaty with the Federation. Alternia was ceded to the Federation, and Federation vessels would be allowed to pass freely through Dominion space between the wormhole and Alternia. Any straying from that path would be seen as an act of aggression. It was a more stable arrangement than it may sound like; neither the Federation nor the Dominion wanted to reprise their bloody, fruitless war.

And so, everything followed logically from there. A group of eleven trolls enlisted in Starfleet, spent a couple of years in the Academy, were sent on a simple mapping mission aboard a powerful starship through the Beta Quadrant to prove that their androids were useful, and got their lives more complicated than any of them expected.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. Alternia was originally under control of the Condesce, then was taken over by the Dominion. After the war between the Dominion and the Federation, Alternia was ceded to the Federation.  
> 2\. Lowbloods have a much longer lifespan in this universe than in Homestuck canon  
> 3\. Shit's gonna go down with the Signless's religion


	5. He Is Already Haugghhh

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A brief initial meeting with Lord English. Meanwhile, the crew gets a new lead in the search for the vessel that attacked them and killed their commanding officers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm falling behind on updating and it's bad. This is why I need to hurry up and get to the point that cowriters can join the fun.

_Saucer separation,_ John thought. _Saucer separation._

Another impact to the ship. John paid close attention to how it felt. If he had to guess from how the impact felt, the enemy that was attacking the Zephyr had just hit the shields with six shots to the port side, but the shields would hold steady and they wouldn’t be in any danger. The second impact had made John land on one of his broken ribs, sending pain spiraling through his body, but he internally he was reassured by the knowledge that Karkat could take care of the problem on the outside of the Zephyr.

It was up to the ones in the holodeck to handle the other problem.

The green intruder kept his gaze on John. “YOU HAVE EMBARKED ON SOME. IDIOTIC QUEST. AND FOR WHAT? YOU HAVE CLEARLY DOOMED YOURSELF TO FAILURE. HOW CAN YOU HOPE TO PREVENT MY EXISTENCE, WHEN I AM ALREADY H- AUGGHHH!!”

He had suddenly taken two shots to the back. His arms seemed to phase out of existence; when they reappeared a few moments later, they were braced in pain. John saw Tavros and Nepeta by the door, both aiming a phaser rifle at the intruder.

“Captain Egbert,” Karkat’s voice called through the communicator, “get your FUCKING USELESS ASS DOWN HERE!”

The intruder pivoted on his thick, talon-like foot. “A TROLL MALE,” he said to Tavros. “ONE OF THE ENGINEERS. AND YOU.” He looked at Nepeta now. “I DON’T RECOGNIZE YOU. I WOULD GUESS THAT YOU ARE NOT IMPORTANT.”

Nepeta responded by turning up the setting on her phaser and firing at him again, hitting him in the face.

“HNGAAAAH!”

His body flickered like a loose light bulb.

“DON’T DO THAT.”

_Saucer Separation._

***

“HAIL THEM.”

“I Don’t Think They Are Willing To Talk.”

“JUST TRY IT!”

A small, sphere-like vessel took another pass across the length of the ship on the port side, firing six shots that seemed to glance off the shields.

“SHIELDS HOLDING STEADY,” Terezi shouted.

Their attacker wasn’t really a threat to them, but they weren’t much of a threat to their attacker, either. It was tiny and moved far too quickly for them to lock any weapons, bouncing throughout space unpredictably, but firing back with primitive phaser models that barely made a dent in the Zephyr’s defenses.

(Starfleet vessels’ weapons are outclassed by those of many other galactic powers, but Starfleet shield technology is highly advanced and has never yet seen its superior.)

“No Response To Our Hails,” Kanaya reported.

“Rrrrrrrgh…” Karkat furiously paced a small section of the bridge floor in front of his chair. “Captain Egbert, get your FUCKING USELESS ASS DOWN HERE!”

“Stop that,” Vriska said, turning to him. “You don’t need John. He’s the captain of the ship, but he gave command to you while he’s not around because he _trusts_ you. He knows that you can make good decisions under pressure, which, frankly, he couldn’t possibly say of most of the bozos left on this ship. Like it or not, Karkat, you’re the one John is counting on to see this ship to safety, and you are waaaaaaaay more capable of it than you’re giving yourself credit for.”

Karkat rubbed his forehead pensively, then returned to the captain’s chair. “Thanks,” he said.

“Besides,” Vriska went on, “as much as I love John, he’s only been captain for two days. He’s barely more experienced at this than you are.”

Terezi interjected, “You LOVE JOHN?”

“Shut the fuck up!!!!!!!!”

An abrupt shaking called their attention away from Vriska’s emotional state.

“COMPUTER,” Karkat barked, “WHAT IN THE COCK-SUCKING SHIT-HEAP IS GOING ON _NOW_?”

“The Zephyr is engaging saucer separation procedure.”

“WHO IN COCHRANE’S SWEET FUCKING NAME ORDERED THAT?”

“The order was given by Captain John Egbert.”

It was a calming thing to hear. He had planned for a saucer separation, after all. The front section of the ship detached itself from the lower section, and the saucer flew off, leaving the majority of the crew behind.

Then a realization hit Karkat.

“DID I ACTUALLY JUST FUCKING USE [ZEFRAM COCHRANE](http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Zefram_Cochrane) AS A SWEAR? I CAN’T FUCKING BELIEVE MYSELF. THIS IS HOW RIDICULOUSLY INUNDATED I’VE BEEN WITH HUMAN CULTURE. NEXT I’LL BE LOSING MY HORNS AND GRAY SKIN AND ABILITY TO MAINTAIN AT LEAST SOME SENSE OF FUCKING DIGNITY. OH, WHO AM I KIDDING? I LOST ANY SEMBLANCE OF DIGNITY ON THE DAY MY BIRTHING POD FIRST SQUEEZED ITSELF INTO BEING.”

“You know," Rose said, "us humans have a lot to say about Zefram Cochrane, but I don’t believe I’ve ever heard anyone use his name as a vulgarity. I doubt it comes from you being surrounded by us, it seems more like you're idolizing our history in a way we never have. So if you DO lose your horns and skin tone, I can almost guarantee it will be voluntary."

“NO. NO. STOP TALKING, LALONDE. DO NOT EVEN SAY ANOTHER WORD. IN FACT, UNSAY EVERYTHING YOU’VE EVER SAID. I DON’T WANT TO HEAR ANOTHER WORD FROM YOU, AND THAT’S A FUCKING ORDER IF IT NEEDS TO BE. FROM NOW ON, ONLY UNWORDS ON THIS BRIDGE.”

“Commander, They Are Hailing Us Now. Audio Only.”

A pause. Karkat tried to turn himself off of Violently Hate Everything Especially Karkat Mode. “Yes. Let’s answer them.”

An enthusiastic voice came into their bridge. “This is the Derse Defense Vessel, the Clamorous Dispatch.”

“This is the Federation starship Zephyr. Why are you attacking—”

“Wait! Wait,” the voice from the Clamorous Dispatch responded. “I have to ask my question first. How did you do that thing you just did?”

Karkat glanced around the bridge, seeing only faces just as confused as his own. He was glad it was an audio-only channel. “The… saucer separation? It’s a built-in feature of the ship.”

“You can just split into two whenever you feel like it?” asked the Clamorous Dispatch.

“Well, it’s not exactly a good idea most of the time…”

“But that’s so cool! My vessel is just a pod that flies around and shoots stuff. Okay, that’s all I wanted to know, what were you asking?”

“WHY DID YOU FIRE ON OUR SHIP?”

“Oh! Uh… I forgot about that. Surrender at once!”

“UH … NO.”

“Please?”

“NO. ANSWER THE QUESTION.”

“My sensors indicate that you have something called the Cartographer. That means you’re here to destroy the universe, and I can’t let that happen.”

“DESTROY THE… WHAT? THE CARTOGRAPHER? WH… what are you talking about?”

“Commander,” Jade said, “I bet he means that object Nepeta found. The thing that giant square/sphere sent us.”

“Wait, what?” the Clamorous Dispatch said. “I think I must have misunderstood. The Cartographer was given to you by the Bellicose Quadric?”

“Not exa—”

“YES YES YES YES YES THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT HAPPENED,” Karkat cut her off.

“Well, then, I’m supposed to welcome you! You’re needed on my home planet! Follow me!”

The Clamorous Dispatch spun in place, and warp nacelles extended from its sides. It warped off, leaving the bridge crew of the Zephyr looking at Karkat expectantly.

“Do we follow, or do we try to get John back?” Jade asked.

“Kanaya,” Karkat said, “can you contact the captain?”

“Zephyr to Captain Egbert,” Kanaya said, “What Is Your Status?”

After a few seconds, John’s voice responded wheezily. “Condition green.”

Karkat felt yet another slap of panic. Condition green was Starfleet code for “I am in danger and you are not permitted to interfere.” What had happened on the saucer that made John start the saucer separation? Had he saved their lives with his preparations? Were they losing a captain for the second time this week? Not only would that be INEXCUSABLY DEPRESSING, it wouldn’t bode well for captain number three.

But Karkat gathered himself. “WE HAVE OUR ORDERS, NOW FOLLOW THAT POD.”

***

“YOU ARE TRULY COMING INTO YOUR OWN, HUMAN MALE,” the intruder bellowed to John. “I AM DELIGHTED TO SEE IT.”

John tried to get himself up, starting with pulling himself to his knees, but he collapsed steadily onto the ground again; his legs couldn’t hold him up.

The intruder had knocked Tavros’s phaser away. Nepeta was still firing at him periodically, and even though parts of him momentarily disappeared whenever she did, he didn’t seem motivated to do anything about it, and he was constantly re-forming within seconds.

“Who are you, and what do you want from us?” John asked, wincing several times.

The intruder grinned. A gold tooth glinted green against the light in the holodeck, and his tongue lifted and revealed a fork at its end. “I AM LORD ENGLISH,” he said, “AND I AM HERE BECAUSE I CAN BE.” He looked longingly at his enormously clawed hand. “IT HAS BEEN SUCH A PAIN TO NOT EXIST FOR SUCH A LONG TIME, BUT IT APPEARS THAT I HAVE FINALLY BEEN BORN. I DECIDED I SHOULD POP IN. TO VISIT THE BUMBLING FOOLS OF THE FEDERATION STARSHIP ZEPHYR. WHO WILL BE AT LEAST PARTIALLLY RESPONSIBLE FOR MY EXISTENCE. HOWEVER, INSTEAD OF FINDING BUMBLING FOOLS, I HAVE HAD THE MAGNIFICENT SURPRISE THAT YOU ARE NOT NEARLY AS INCOMPETENT AS EXPECTED. THIS ONLY MAKES THE KNOWLEDGE OF YOUR INEVITABLE FAILURE EVEN MORE SATISFYING.”

Nepeta angrily fired her phaser again. Lord English groaned in pain but gave her no response.

“Where did you take Gamzee?” John gasped out.

“INITIATION.”

“Initiation into what?”

“IT IS BEST NOT TO FOCUS ON A QUESTION WHOSE ANSWER WILL BE MADE CLEAR SOON, HUMAN CAPTAIN.”

“Answer the captain!” Nepeta screamed, giving his back the best she could with her phaser.

“NGAH! YOU ARE IRRELEVANT, TROLL FEMALE!” Lord English finally met her eyes. “YOU ARE THE MOST IRRELEVANT ON THIS CREW. STOP ATTEMPTING TO MATTER.”

She shot him in the face.

“ARRRGH!”

He took a step towards her, and another. She kept firing at him, and pieces of him would momentarily disappear, but they were re-forming faster now. He was preparing to deal a mighty blow to her, and she dropped her phaser and raised her hands as if she were planning to claw him. Brave, but it was clear who would win the fight. The intruder could probably crush her under his foot entirely on accident.

Without warning, a glass cylinder materialized around Lord English. He looked around and tried to slam himself out of it.

“WHAT IS THIS. SOME KIND OF TUBE?”

The next instant, the cylinder filled with water. It was a holodeck program, but not one John was familiar with. Lord English, based on the muffled grunts he was making, wasn’t having any trouble breathing, but the fake water was weighing him down so he could barely move. With a rumbling growl, he glared at them all once more, then disappeared entirely.

The holodeck doors opened. “I2 he gone?” Sollux ran in briskly.

“Sollux, did you do that?” Nepeta asked.

“Yeah, ju2t a quick program I cooked up while Billiard2 Boy wa2 2creaming up a 2torm.” He looked casual about it, but John knew by how affable he was, in that moment that he was really pleased with himself.

“Guys,” Tavros said, “the captain needs some help, over there,”

“Fuck,” Sollux spat. “We need the doctor. The 2hip did the 2aucer 2eparation thing, right?”

“Yeah,,,” Tavros said, “and they might have warped off, so we could be far away from Feferi, with no warp engines,,”

Sollux took off his glasses with a grin, exposing his jarring heterochromia. “2houldn’t be a big deal. Nepeta, figure out where they went for me. I’ll take care of the re2t.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the blatant Simpsons reference: "What is this, some kind of tube?"
> 
> probably one of my favorite lines ever to be honest.


	6. Derse

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Karkat, Dave, and an Aradiabot visit a planet where they expect to find more information about the Cartographer.

“Commander, I don’t know how to explain this.”

“What is it, Serket?” Karkat bounced to Vriska’s panel. Inexplicable things were almost never good, but at least it was something else for him to think about, to distract him from everything that was bothering him otherwise.

“The Clamorous Dispatch has dropped out of warp, and we’ll catch up to it in just under a minute. It’s not in a star system, but it’s in orbit around a planet.”

“A rogue planet?” Karkat asked.

“That’s what I believed at first,” Vriska went on, “but I’ve scanned the planet. It looks like it’s Class M. Surface temperature averaging 15 degrees Celsius.”

(In the ranking of planets from A to Z, “Class M” refers to those planets ideal for life: nitrogen and oxygen atmosphere, moderate gravitational field, survivable temperatures, water, and other traits that define planets such as Earth or other hubs of civilization. Other types of planets exist that can sustain life, but advanced life forms generally only proliferate on a Class M planet.)

“How can a CLASS M planet be out there in the MIDDLE OF FUCKING NOWHERE?”

“Remember the part where I said I didn’t know how to explain it?” Vriska asked. “I still don’t.”

Karkat went back to the captain’s chair. “Keep scanning it, and take us out of warp when we’re close.”

“Aye, Karkat.”

“Do not call him Karkat when he is serving as commanding officer,” Equius cut in firmly.

“Or what? You’ll put me on court martial?”

Equius stamped his foot and snorted angrily, but said nothing.

“Dropping out of warp,” Vriska called.

“WHOA,” Terezi shouted. “They have a HUGE magnetic field around this planet.”

“Do we need to keep our distance?” Karkat asked.

“It’s nothing our engines can’t handle, sir, but we’re talking way bigger than anything I’ve seen on any planet. This is the size of magnetic field you’d expect to find on a star.”

Karkat thought about that. “Is it… somehow possible this IS a star?”

“Negative,” Vriska said, “not unless stars can exist with gravity and atmosphere typical of M-class planets, and also happen to have humanoid life signs.”

“What’s the population?” Karkat asked.

“A few hundred thousand,” Terezi reported. “Not huge.”

“The Clamorous Dispatch Is Hailing Us.”

“Open a channel.”

The enthusiastic voice from the Clamorous Dispatch filled the bridge once more. “Hey, Zephyr. My boss wants to talk to your commanding officer. Beam down to the coordinates I’m sending you.”

The signal was cut. Karkat had a few seconds to evaluate what he’d been told before Equius cut in.

“It is against regulations for the commanding officer to go on any away mission,” Equius said.

“havve you evven studied any actual Starfleet history?” Eridan jabbed. “that’s about the least obeyed regulation anybody’s evver bothered to keep wwritten dowwn.”

“I still advise obedience in this case,” Equius said, breaking into a sweat out of vicarious anxiety. “They only finished attacking us minutes ago.”

“Don’t think of this as a humdrum away mission,” Rose said. “These are presumably the same people who attacked us and killed Captain Egbert Senior, and now they’re willing to talk. It’s a diplomatic mission, and the commanding officer should be present on the surface.”

“Yeah, but the captain STILL has a PRETTY good chance of getting killed on sight,” Terezi said.

“I’m not the captain…” Karkat muttered.

“Do NOT start that again!” Vriska chided.

Remembering her pep talk from before, Karkat regained his resolve. “ALRIGHT then.” He stood and began walking. “I’ll go, but I sure won’t be going alone. VANTAS TO STRIDER.”

“Strider here,” Dave’s voice responded.

“MEET ME IN THE TRANSPORTER ROOM.”

“Sure thing.”

“Oh, and bring an Aradiabot. And that alien cube from the…” He trailed off, unable to remember the name of the hostile ship, which they’d just learned.

“Bellicose Quadric,” Jade reminded him.

“From that, yeah. The three of us will beam down together.”

He turned to look at the other bridge officers, emotionally spanning from Equius, who was still very much in distress, to Eridan, who looked downright proud of Karkat.

“We deserve some fucking answers,” Karkat said. “And I’m gonna get them.”

***

“So you can warp the ship?” John gasped out.

“2hould be able to.” Sollux was entirely calm. “Can’t hit a very high warp factor, but my telekine2i2 let2 me do thi2 2tuff. Might need medical help afterward2, though. Take2 a lot of energy to move 2omething thi2 big.”

Nepeta shouted at them from across the holodeck: “I found the other half of the Zefur. Plotting a course now.”

Sollux went on. “A famou2 ance2tor of mine who had the 2ame gift I have wa2 commonly known by the alia2 ‘the Helm2man.’ Ju2t becau2e he could move entire fleet2 at warp 2peed2.”

John tried to laugh. “Does that mean you would’ve wanted to be the helmsman of this ship?”

“Nah. I’m way better at engineering, plu2 I’m needed there. I can u2e my power2 to move part2 around ea2ily. We barely need to worry about a warp core breach if it ever even come2 to that. Plu2, with my luck, if I wa2 on the bridge instead of on engineering, I’d 2ma2h through the hull and get u2 all 2ucked into 2pace.”

Nepeta handed him a PADD detailing their course.

“Alright,” he said resolutely. “It’2 time. After all…” he put his glasses back on dramatically. “We can’t ju2t take thi2 big of a trip on an impul2e.”

Silence.

“Okay, that wa2n’t a very good pun.”

More silence.

“I don’t even know why I put my gla22e2 back on. I need to keep em off to do thi2.”

Still silence.

“Nobody 2ay a word about thi2 to anyone or I cram an i2olinear rod in your orifice2.”

***

Three figures materialized on the surface of the dark planet: Karkat Vantas, Dave Strider, and an Aradiabot.

The Aradiabot was tall, slender, and dignified-looking. More importantly, she looked almost exactly like her organic counterpart, Aradia Megido. Alternian artificial intelligence technology was extraordinarily advanced, but Equius’s original physical design for the android had a sort of tin-can feel. Human technology and the memories of the other trolls were used to make the androids look and (approximately) act like a real person – like Aradia.

There was one fundamental difference, though. As Eridan pointed out, people are uncomfortable around androids if they can’t see that it’s mechanical by sight alone. If the Aradiabots fully passed as trolls, they would never be implemented. So, the Aradiabots all possessed metallic skin and glowing red eyes.

“So,” Karkat said, looking at the landscape around him, “this is desolate.”

“You aint kidding,” Dave replied.

The area was lit by a faint glow from underneath the ground, and had a dark purple color. They could distantly see coal-black humanoid figures on the horizon. There wasn’t much to speak of except for the inexplicably violet glowing soil. The Aradiabot began scanning with a tricorder. Then—

“Ow.”

Dave and Karkat turned to her. Brick-red liquid poured from her arm, and one of the natives, a thin, masculine-looking person with an intense glare wearing a brace on his torso similar to Equius’s, held a knife.

“What is this. What did I just do. Why did I do that, and why is this happening.” The native seemed only mildly distressed in his tone. “I’m sorry about stabbing your robot, but why is your robot bleeding rust.”

“I like this guy, he skips the small talk and goes straight to stabbing, then just reflects on the stabbing. That’s perfect. You’re perfect.” Dave allowed the stranger the smallest smirk. “But the answer is that her design is based on an actual person with that color of blood, and we needed some hydraulics to improve her functioning in certain programs, so we gave her blood and made it that color.”

“Weird,” the native said. “So you have the Cartographer?”

Karkat held up the strange object. “Who are you?” he asked. Unlike Dave, he was more comfortable with some amount of small talk.

“Name’s Jack Noir.” He put his knife away slowly. “Your names?”

“I’m Commander Karkat Vantas of the starship Zephyr.” It was his first time saying it, and it felt amazingly good. “This is Lieutenant Strider, and you can call her Ensign Megido.”

“How do you do,” the Aradiabot said. She didn’t seem all that offended about being stabbed.

“What can you tell us about this place?” Karkat asked.

Jack hesitated. “Don’t you know what the Cartographer is for?”

“It was given to us, but nobody explained it.”

“Hm.” Jack began walking and motioned for them to follow him. “Incompetent bitch. I guess I’ll have to explain it myself, then.”

They were headed towards the tallest tower on the horizon. It looked to be a few kilometers off.

“Have you ever heard of a creature called Lord English?”

“No, what is an english?” Karkat asked.

“Right, I don’t guess you would have.” Jack was looking progressively more irritated, exposing his serrated teeth in his scowl. “Lord English is, in theory, an extremely powerful energy being.”

“In theory?” Dave asked.

“Yes. He has the potential to wipe out all of existence if he comes to full power, but he’s far from full power as it is. He’s just a puff of cosmic smoke right now, so he has to focus on ascending to greater forms. My race’s job is to keep him from making any progress.”

“Okay,” Karkat said, “and how do you go about doing that?”

“Lord English needs a lot of energy to achieve corporeal form. A ridiculous amount of energy. More energy than you’ve ever looked at. A lot of energy.”

“How much energy?”

“So much energy.”

“Wow.”

“The amount of energy that might be released by, say, the annihilation of a universe or two.”

“ah.”

“Ah.”

“0_0”

“Yep,” Jack said. “You are aware, I assume, of the numerous gates that connect different universes?”

“Yes,” Karkat said. “OH yes. We learned about ALL KINDS of transuniversal gates. The class that taught about that in Starfleet Academy would have been SUPER FUCKING FUN if it hadn’t TRAUMATIZED ME FOREVER.” He wrung his hands as he walked. “CAN’T EVEN SIT ON A FUCKING LOAD GAPER WITHOUT WORRYING I’LL SNEEZE MYSELF INTO A PORTAL.”

Jack was unbothered by Karkat’s sudden tirade. “Well, Lord English targets gates of a certain type, the ones that moves a great deal through space in both universes. Its location has to be unstable, but its existence has to be constant. Lord English just kinda tugs on the space where these gates are connected and tries to force the universes to collide. That’s been his strategy for a long time, but it hasn’t ever worked. Someone always finds out how to stop him in time.”

They walked wordlessly for a few minutes. Then Jack went on.

“The way he is now, before any universe is annihilated, he’s just a wisp of energy. He can’t take on a physical form or have any semblance of a body until he’s succeeded. But, in the meantime…” he sighed in frustration. “See, we have devices, like that Cartographer of yours, to track the gates, communicate between universes, and put a stop to Lord English, but we don’t have the technology to go after him, in a way.”

“In a way?” Karkat asked. “What does that mean, ‘in a way’?”

“Every time he tries to rise, he manages to gather forces to defend him. An army is necessary to defeat him, and we on this planet aren’t exactly a force to be reckoned with.”

Karkat thought of how the Clamorous Dispatch didn’t even leave a dent in the Zephyr.

Jack kept going in his explanation. “Not to say we haven’t been trying. For a while, the government here has been experimenting with genetic manipulation, and I’m one of the results. The idea was to make us smart and strong enough to lead an army here, but we didn’t get done in time. He’s already here. Kinda.”

“So you’re genetically engineered?” Dave asked.

“I am,” Jack responded, “but not many people on this planet are. They designed me to be cunning and strong and to not have as difficult a time communicating with outsiders as most of my species has. I was going to be a leader. I guess it’s not too late for that, though.”

“Is your strength why you have that brace you’re wearing?” Dave asked. “To keep you from accidentally breaking anything? A friend of ours wears something similar.”

“Nah…” Jack brushed his brace with his hand and winced in pain. “It’s to keep me from stabbing people.”

“It doesn’t work,” the Aradiabot said.

“I know. Shut up.”

They were nearing the highest tower now. A few native Dersites were making some kind of a fuss, and the largest of them, about nine feet tall, saw Jack and ran up to him. Jack motioned for the Zephyr crewmembers to wait and had a hushed conversation with the newcomer. After a moment, Jack raised his voice.

“No, YOU trust ME, Hearts! This is more important than your dumbass crisis. These guys have the Cartographer, so they need to talk to her IMMEDIATELY.”

The one called Hearts looked confused, but he didn’t say anything more.

***

“Captain, we’re approaching the lower section of the ship.”

John nodded weakly.

“How you feeling, Sollux?” Nepeta asked.

“I’ll know in like ten 2econd2,” Sollux replied. He was still warping the ship, but he didn’t seem to be in as bad of shape as he’d predicted. At least, the floor around him wasn’t splattered with any mustard-colored blood.

“Zefurr to Other Zefurr,” Nepeta called into her communicator.

“Nepeta,” the voice of Equius responded, “it’s a great pleasure to know you’re okay.”

Nepeta smiled, equally happy to hear from Equius. “Get sick bay ready for two, we’re gonna beam em straight there.”

They were still a few moments out from the rest of the ship.

“Equikitty, did you destroy the Zefur?” Nepeta asked playfully.

“I have done no such thing.”

“How did you even take command? Isn’t Karkat supposed to be in the chair? I knew you’d kill him someday but I nefur guessed it’d happen so soon.”

“I did not kill Vantas. He left command of the vessel to me. As acting captain I find your comments to be insubordination and command you to stop.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“No.”

“Please.”

“I’m gonna fuckin speww evverywwhere,” Eridan said on the other section next to Equius. “Nep, wwhere is the cap?”

“He’s one of the ones headed to sick bay,” Nepeta said. “He’ll be okay, but—”

“Fuck.” Eridan stood in anger. “Fuck. Leave the guy alone for fivve coddamn minutes an he gets himself killed.” He left the bridge, still muttering to himself.

***

The queen of Derse sat cross-legged, tapping her finger against her armrest, intensely glaring Karkat down. He, Dave, Jack, and the Aradiabot stood in the middle of the room, while four guards each stood at the front and back walls of the room, and Hearts sulked in the shadows.

“Why exactly are you showing me that thing?” she asked.

“I-It’s the Cartographer,” Karkat said, trying to sound confident and, as always, failing.

“I can see that it looks very much like our Cartographer, but it is not a functional version. It’s broken.”

Karkat’s heart raced. Dave’s hand reflexively inclined toward his phaser.

“Broken?” Karkat asked.

“Place your thumb in that pad, center of the top face.”

Karkat did as she asked. Just as it had done when the Zephyr officers were meeting about it, the cube flashed orange a few times, then did nothing.

“See that?” she shrieked triumphantly. “Broken. It’s not supposed to do that. It’s supposed to start up.” She shifted her gaze to Jack Noir. “Why did you think this was worth my time?”

Jack was looking murderous. It looked to Karkat as if his brace tightened on his torso. “The Clamorous Dispatch reported that they had the real Cartographer.”

“Well then your first mistake was trusting the bozo on that ship. Please sit at the back for now, Noir. I’ll be deciding your punishment later. I would expect your rations to disappear for a while at the very least.”

Jack turned, grumbling something about huge bitches, and backed to the wall.

“As for you,” she said to Karkat, Dave, and the Aradiabot, “you are invited to leave before I decide to kill you.”

“Actually, I think they should stay.” Hearts stepped forward from the now.

“Ah, yes, you had some business with me, too, Baron?”

“Yes.” The Baron, whose status in Derse society could have been said to be somewhat Haughty in nature, pulled a small, dark cube out of his coat that looked identical to the one Karkat was still holding.

“Ah, the REAL Cartographer.” The queen smiled gloatingly at the Zephyr team. “It is good to see it now.”

“I think you should take a look at it,” the Haughty Baron said, approaching the throne.

She snatched the Cartographer from him with a look of concern. “Why?”

“Try activating it.”

She placed her thumb on the pad. Three flashes of bright neon orange, then nothing. The exact same reaction as the other one.

“What…” the queen was dumbfounded. “It’s broken?” She looked at the Zephyr team again. “What do I make of this? Instead of one working Cartographer, we have two broken ones.”

Dave spoke up. “You mind if I take a look inside it? I’m an engineer, so I could probably figure the shit out of your space cube.”

She evaluated him for a moment. Then she handed her Cartographer to the Baron. “Very well,” she said. “Please fix both, if you can. And I will wish for you to remain in this chamber while you work.”

“Can do,” Dave said, “but I’ll just need a few tools, and not the kind of tool the commander here is.”

***

Feferi was busily tending to John’s wounds. The downright chipper Sollux lay on an adjacent cot in sick bay, recanting to her the details of his own heroics… though he was embellishing slightly.

“With that, the mon2ter’2 head flew clean off. That wa2 when I 2tepped into the holodeck, took off my gla22e2, and—”

“Alright wwhat the hell wwere you thinkin.”

Eridan stormed in and arrived on the other side of John.

“Eridan!” Feferi shouted. “You KNOW I don’t want to sea you for a while!”

“I’m not here to talk to you, Fef.” He got in John’s face. “I wwanna hear the truth. Wwhat happened ovver there? Wwhy did you declare condition green? An wwhy has the neww captain of the ship put himself in unspeakable danger so quickly an brazenly?”

“I declared condition green because I didn’t want you interfering!” John said. “And I’m glad you didn’t.”

“Oh wwell you’re fuckin glad wwe didn’t.” Eridan turned and began ranting at the air. “an intruder showwed up on a vvessel wwith a creww a four people and nearly disintegrates the wwhole saucer an he’s just elated it happened.”

“Eridan.” Kanaya walked in. “I Think It Would Be Best For You To Leave At Once.”

“wwho made you captain.”

“The doctor doe2n’t want you here. You’re di2turbing the patient2.”

“Don’t speak for me!”

“Well, he’2 di2turbing me, anyway.”

“Evverythin about you disturbs me.”

“That’s real mature.”

“Please—”

“I’m not leavving I need to talk to—”

“It Would Be Best If—”

“Do you think he care2 right now?”

“Don’t You Think This Should Wait?”

“You guys are being REELY distracting—”

“This is of immediate concern—”

“Ouch!”

“Sorry! Sea? I bumped the captain!”

“Not good new2 for your promotion—”

“What Exactly Is The Rush?”

“Are you payin attention to me or—”

“Why would a 2limeball like you have the right to—”

“BECAUSE I HAVVE THE POWWER TO DECLARE JOHN EGBERT UNFIT FOR DUTY.”

Thick chaos transformed into silence, and all eyes in the room were locked on Eridan. None of them could believe what they’d just heard – including Eridan, to some extent.

“Are you 2eriou2ly planning to do that?” Sollux asked.

“Havven’t decided.” Eridan swooped over John again. “I need to hear an explanation of the story before I can decide its denouement.”

“Well,” John started calmly, “when I was in my office, I had this feeling. Like, something was seriously wrong with the ship. I think I could somehow… sense that the intruder was already on board.”

Eridan narrowed his eyes. “I havven’t heard of a single provven instance of a human exhibiting empathic powwers on that levvel.”

“Well, I don’t think it was an empath thing, exactly. I couldn’t sense the intruder’s thoughts, I could just tell something was wrong with the ship.”

Eridan nodded. “So did you knoww anythin else about it?”

“I knew it was on the saucer section of the ship. That’s why I ordered the evacuation. I wanted to protect as much of the crew as I could.”

“Wwhich is also wwhy you declared condition green.”

“Exactly. So I might sound insane, but I was right about all of it.”

Eridan’s lips pursed. “wwere you able to identify the foul monster?”

John nodded. “He called himself Lord English.”

“L-l-l…” Eridan staggered back. His knees began shaking and his breathing became sharp, appearing to be an effort exerted by his entire body. “Theres stories of a Dominion wwar against a beast called Lord English. They barely wwon, and they’re the Dominion. Wwe just have one ship, cap, and wwe’re stuck out of our owwn time. There’s no wway wwe can do this.”

“Eridan,” Kanaya said firmly.

“Okay,” John said, beginning to look terrified. “We will find help. Just…”

“Just wwhat. It’s lookin pretty hopeless to me, cap. He’s tryin to destroy our universe an it sounds like he’s farther along than he’s evver been.”

“That may be true, but that’s no reason to—”

“Eridan!”

Eridan looked down to see that he’d unconsciously grabbed John’s phaser from his holster and set it to the maximum setting. He turned the setting down and delicately placed the phaser on a nearby table.

“One more question,” Eridan said steadily. “Wwhat wwas happening wwhen you ordered the saucer separation?”

“When I ordered it?”

“Yes. According to our logs, you issued the command. Wwhat led to it?”

“But… I didn’t…” John was bewildered. “I remember thinking it needed to happen, but I wasn’t able to give the command. I guess it just kind of… went ahead.”

Eridan was taking deep breaths, trying to keep himself calm. He didn’t know what had come over him, but he felt like he couldn’t blame himself. A universe-ending monster was on the loose, and their captain had apparently given orders without giving orders. That or he couldn’t remember, which was no more of a good sign.

“Are You Going To Relieve The Captain Of Duty?” Kanaya asked.

“…Not yet.” Eridan stepped away. “But wwe are gonna do some intensivve evvaluations, you hear me, Cap?” He turned to Feferi. “An as for you—”

“Eridan, Please Leave.”

He ignored her. “As for you, i wwant you to knoww i can’t blame you for bein mad at me. Just talk to me wwhen you’re good an ready.” He stepped into the hallway.

“Hey! Ampora!” John shouted.

“Yes, Cap?”

“Put on a fucking uniform.”

Eridan scoffed and continued on, door closing behind him.

John wasn’t about to let his captaining momentum go to waste. “Egbert to bridge,” he called.

“Yes, Captain?” Equius’s voice replied.

“What’s our status?”

“We’re orbiting a planet whose inhabitants seem to know something about the object we received in battle. Commander Vantas, Lieutenant Strider, and Ensign Aradiabot 371 are on the surface investigating.”

“Understood. Egbert to Vantas.”

In the throne room on the planet below, Dave had apparently just finished repairing one of the Cartographers. Karkat straightened himself in excitement. “Vantas here. You’re okay, Captain?”

“I’m fine. Have you learned anything?”

Karkat felt like he’d learned more than enough, but he thought he should start at the most urgent piece of information. “According to one of the locals here, our little souvenir has some connection to someone named Lord English.”

“Lord English?” John replied. “Huh. That’s a funny coincidence, he was just here not too long ago.”

The queen’s throne room seemed to whoosh with the sudden intensity; the guards and queen were now glaring directly at Karkat. “Ohhhh, Captain…” he moaned. “I really wish you hadn’t said that.”

“Lord English is already active?” the Black Queen shrieked. “How do you know?”

John must have heard her, because he replied “Well, when he was here, he introduced himself.”

The Black Queen immediately pressed a button on the side of her throne, and a door opened behind her. Her throne began moving slowly backward into it.

“Captain,” Karkat said, “I REALLY wish you hadn’t said THAT, either.”

“If he was speaking, he must already be corporeal,” the Black Queen said. “In which case, he has already succeeded in destroying our universes and has come back in time to gloat. I’m afraid all that is left is for us to find some means of evacuation.”

She glared down at Dave, who was holding the repaired Cartographer.

“Hearts. Guards. Kill Jack and the newcomers.”

The door closed in front of her.

**Author's Note:**

> Please leave a comment telling me what you think! This is a huge undertaking and I'd like to post a chapter every week at least, but it'll be hard to keep up that pace if I don't have any feedback.
> 
> Also, as you may have gathered from the summary, I have four big plots planned for this, but I'd like for each one to be written by a separate writer. That said, I only have myself and one other writer on this, so if you're interested in joining the project and can make roughly one chapter every two weeks at least, message me for details!


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